Seagate Forms Partnership With Micron

Seagate and Micron have announced that they will join forces to work on projects together over a number of years.

Seagate is better known for its traditional hard disk drive solutions, while Micron has concentrated on solid state disks (SSD) under the consumer brands of Crucial and Lexar.

It therefore makes sense to collaborate on ideas including hybrid devices and developing solutions that work best on a business-by-business basis.

The partnership between Seagate and Micron is nothing new in the storage world. HGST already has a long-term alignment with Intel to work on the SSD elements of its business, while Seagate and Western Digital have both acquired interests through buyouts and mergers.

Toshiba and Sandisk took the idea one step further with a deal that involved co-ownership of a storage device fabrication plant.

The new Seagate-Micron alliance will concentrate mostly on Serial Attached SCSI and SSDs but is likely to expand beyond those parameters to include the possibility of hybrid systems and flash controllers for spindle drives.

Further details are yet to be announced. Meanwhile both companies have been promoting new ranges independently.

Lexar can now boast a ‘stick’ flash drive with a 256GB capacity, along with a new faster SSD drive for gamers, while Seagate has relaunched with a new ‘living’ logo and a range of products including a personal cloud and some even bigger personal hard drives.

Micron has its own deal with Intel to ‘disrupt 3D NAND’ as part of a joint storage venture at its Utah foundry.

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