Seagate Drops $694M on Dot Hill to Boost its Cloud Business

Seagate announced it has entered into an agreement to purchase Dot Hill Systems for approximately $694 million. The external storage array systems and software from Dot Hill will fold into Seagate's Cloud Systems and Electronics Solutions business.

Seagate expects the hardware, software, numerous patents, and private label OEM channel from Dot Hill to foster growth in its cloud business as it evolves. The Dot Hill patent portfolio across storage, data tiering, and the cloud is extensive, and its software is white-labeled inside some large providers, most notably HP and Dell.

Seagate President of Cloud Systems and Electronics Solutions Phil Brace noted the importance of OEM customers in advancing its strategic efforts and said that the company looks forward "to welcoming Dot Hill’s strong team, which has proven experience in developing and delivering best-in-class storage solutions that are trusted by the world’s leading IT manufacturers and their channel partners."

After purchasing the flash business from LSI last year and other strategic acquisitions, Seagate is investing in hyperscale and cloud workloads.

It is also a founding member of the Kinetic Open Storage Project launched this week by the Linux Foundation. The company has been developing this open storage platform for a number of years, as it looks to eliminate the storage server tier of traditional data center architectures.