Seagate Technology PLC Profile
Seagate Technology Holdings plc provides data storage technology and infrastructure solutions.
The company’s principal products are hard disk drives, commonly referred to as disk drives, hard drives (HDDs). In addition to HDDs, the company produces a broad range of data storage products, including solid state drives (SSDs) and storage subsystems and offer storage solutions, such as a scalable edge-to-cloud mass data platform that includes data transfer shuttles and a storage-as-a-service cloud.
The company’s HDD products are designed for mass capacity storage and legacy markets. Mass capacity storage involves well-established use cases—such as hyperscale data centers and public clouds, as well as emerging use cases. Legacy markets are those that the company continues to sell to but it does not plan to invest in significantly. The company’s HDD and SSD product portfolio includes Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) based designs to support a wide variety of mass capacity and legacy applications.
The company’s systems portfolio includes storage subsystems for enterprises, cloud service providers (CSPs), scale-out storage servers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Engineered for modularity, mobility, capacity and performance, these solutions include its enterprise HDDs and SSDs, enabling customers to integrate scalable storage within existing environments or create new ecosystems from the ground up in a secure manner.
The company’s Lyve portfolio provides a simple and secure way to manage massive volumes of data across the distributed enterprise. The Lyve platform includes a shuttle solution that enables enterprises to transfer massive amounts of data from endpoints to the core cloud and a storage-as-a-service cloud offering that provides frictionless mass capacity storage at the metro edge.
Data Storage Technologies
The design and manufacturing of HDDs depends on highly advanced technology and manufacturing techniques. Therefore, it requires high levels of research and development spending and capital equipment investments. The company designs, fabricates, and assembles a number of the most important components in its disk drives, including read/write heads and recording media. The company designs and manufacturing operations are based on technology platforms that are used to produce various disk drive products that serve multiple data storage applications and markets. The company’s core technology platforms focus on the areal density of media and read/write head technologies, including innovations like shingled-magnetic-recording (SMR) technology, the high-capacity enabling heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, and the throughput-optimizing multi actuator MACH.2 technology. This design and manufacturing approach allows the company to deliver a portfolio of storage products to service a wide range of data storage applications and industries.
The company also offers SSDs as part of its storage solutions portfolio. The company’s portfolio includes devices with SATA, SAS and NVMe interfaces. The SSDs differ from HDDs in that they are without mechanical parts.
SSDs store data on NAND flash memory cells, or metal-oxide semiconductor transistors using a charge on a capacitor to represent a binary digit. SSD technology offers fast access to data and robust performance. SSDs complement hyperscale applications, high-density data centers, cloud environments and web servers. They are also used in mission-critical enterprise applications, consumer, gaming, and NAS applications.
Products
The company offers a broad range of storage solutions for mass capacity storage and legacy applications. The company’s product offerings include:
Mass Capacity Storage
Enterprise Nearline HDDs: The company’s high-capacity enterprise HDDs ship in capacities of up to 30TB. These products are designed for mass capacity data storage in the core and at the edge, as well as server environments and cloud systems that require high capacity, enterprise reliability, energy efficiency and integrated security. They are available in SATA and SAS interfaces. Additionally, certain customers can utilize many of the company’s HDDs with Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology enabled which increases the available storage capacity of the drive with certain performance trade-offs.
Enterprise Nearline SSDs: The company’s enterprise SSDs are designed for high-performance, hyperscale, high-density and cloud applications. They are offered with multiple interfaces, including SAS, SATA, and NVMe and in capacities up to 15TB.
Enterprise Nearline Systems: The company’s systems portfolio provides modular storage arrays, storage server platforms, multi-level configuration for disks (commonly referred as JBODs) and expansion shelves to expand and upgrade data center storage infrastructure and other enterprise applications. They feature speed, scalability and security. The company’s capacity-optimized systems feature multiple scalable configurations and can accommodate up to 96 26TB (terabyte) drives per chassis. The company offers capacity and performance-optimized systems that include all-flash, all-disk and hybrid arrays for workloads demanding high performance, capacity and efficiency.
VIA (Video and Image Applications): The company’s video and image HDDs are built to support the high-write workload of an always-on, always-recording video systems. These optimized drives are built to support the growing needs of the video imaging market with support for multiple streams and capacities up to 24TB.
NAS (Network-Attached Storage): The company’s NAS drives are built to support the performance and reliability demanded by small and medium businesses, and incorporate interface software with custom-built health management, error recovery controls, power settings, and vibration tolerance. The company’s NAS HDD solutions are available in capacities up to 24TB. The company also offers NAS SSDs with capacities up to 4TB.
Legacy Applications
Mission Critical HDDs and SSDs: The company continues to support 10,000 and 15,000 RPM (revolutions per minute) HDDs, offered in capacities up to 2.4TB, which enable increased throughput while improving energy efficiency. The company’s enterprise SSDs are available in capacities up to 15TB, with endurance options up to 10 drive writes per day and various interfaces. The company’s SSDs deliver the speed and consistency required for demanding enterprise storage and server applications.
Consumer Solutions: The company’s external storage solutions, with capacities up to 20TB are shipped, under the Seagate Ultra Touch, One Touch, Expansion and Basics product lines, as well as under the LaCie brand name. The company strives to deliver the best customer experience by leveraging its core technologies, offering services, such as Seagate Recovery Services (data recovery) and partnering with leading brands, such as Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation and Disney’s Star Wars and Marvel.
Client Applications: The company’s 3.5-inch desktop drives offer up to 8TB of capacity, designed for personal computers and workstation applications and its 2.5-inch notebook drives offer up to 5TB for HDD and up to 2TB for SSD designed for applications, such as traditional notebooks, convertible systems and external storage to address a range of performance needs and sizes for affordable, high-capacity storage. The company’s DVR (digital video recorder) HDDs are optimized for video streaming in always-on consumer premise equipment applications with capacities up to 8TB. The company’s gaming SSDs are specifically optimized internal storage for gaming rigs and are designed to enhance the gaming experience during game load and game play with capacities up to 4TB for SSD.
Lyve Edge-to-Cloud Mass Capacity Platform
Lyve: Lyve is the company’s platform built with mass data in mind. These solutions, including modular hardware and software, deliver a portfolio that streamlines data access, transport and management for today’s enterprise.
Cloud: Lyve Cloud storage-as-a-service platform is an S3-compatible storage-only cloud designed to allow enterprises to unlock the value of their massive unstructured datasets. The company collaborates with certain partners to maximize accessibility and provide extensive interconnect opportunities for additional cloud services and geographical expansion.
Data Services: Lyve Mobile Data Transfer Services consists of Lyve Mobile modular and scalable hardware, purpose-built for simple and secure mass-capacity edge data storage, lift-and-shift initiatives, and other data movement for the enterprise. These products are cloud-vendor agnostic and can be integrated seamlessly with public or private cloud data centers and providers.
Customers
The company sells its products to major OEMs, distributors, and retailers.
OEM customers, including large hyperscale data center companies and cloud service providers (CSPs), typically enter into master purchase agreements with the company. Deliveries are scheduled only after receipt of purchase orders.
The company’s distributors generally enter into non-exclusive agreements for the resale of its products. They typically furnish the company with a non-binding indication of their near-term requirements and product deliveries are generally scheduled accordingly. In addition, the company offers sales programs to distributors on a quarterly and periodic basis to promote the sale of selected products in the sales channel.
The company’s retail channel consists of its branded storage products sold to retailers either by it directly or by its distributors. Retail sales made by the company or its distributors typically require greater marketing support, sales incentives, and price protection periods.
Competition
The company competes with manufacturers of storage solutions and the other principal manufacturers in the data storage solution industry, including Micron Technology, Inc.; Samsung Electronics; SK hynix, Inc.; Kioxia Holdings Corporation; Toshiba Corporation; and Western Digital Corporation, operating the Western Digital, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, and SanDisk brands.
Seasonality
The company’s legacy markets, such as consumer storage applications, traditionally experienced seasonal variability in demand with higher levels of demand in the first half of the fiscal year (year ended June 2023), primarily driven by consumer spending related to back-to-school season and traditional holiday shopping season.
Patents and Licenses
As of June 30, 2023, the company had approximately 4,200 U.S. patents and 450 patents issued in various foreign jurisdictions, as well as approximately 350 U.S. and 100 foreign patent applications pending.
Seagate, Seagate Technology, LaCie, Maxtor, Lyve and the Spiral Logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC (the company’s subsidiary) or one of its affiliated companies in the United States (the U.S.) and/or other countries.
History
Seagate Technology Holdings plc was founded in 1978. The company was incorporated in 2017.
