Table of Contents
Seagate is an American based international company that provides the best data storage solutions across the world. The company develops excellent products for people and businesses across to help them in creation, sharing and preservation of their devices memories and business information. Over the past few years, the amount of data stored has increased from megabytes to thousands of gigabytes. It confirms the need by individuals and business entities to acquire effective storage systems with ability to store large volumes of data. Consequently, demand for storage technology is increasing across the globe, as the technology continues to evolve. Current data storage systems require more than archiving the information. It requires providing the best approach to analyze information by understanding the data behavior and pattern to enhance user experiences and relieve memories.
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The main aim of the Seagate is to harness stored information for development and innovation. Seagate builds upon its culture of becoming the storage leadership to solve the storage challenges brought about by rapid change in technology industry. Seagate is the leading manufacturer of electronic data storage products. Their principal products are Hard Disk Drives or HDDs commonly known in the market as hard drives or disk drives. HDDs are electronic devices for storing digitally encoded data, which continue to be the primary storage devices for mass storage of information. It is due to their high quality and performance attributes as well as their cost effectiveness. The company produces electronic storage devices, such as HDDs, solid state drives (SSDs) and solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs). Their products are designed for business storage system and individual computing applications. Through the companys effective supply chain management, it dominates the major global markets and realizes huge revenues annually.
Products
Seagate offers a wide range of SSHD, HDD and SSD products for small and medium sized business organizations, individuals, data centers, compute, and non-compute applications. Within each of the above product categories, Seagate offers more than one type of product. The company offers enterprise performance disk drives with increased efficiency at 10000 and 15000 TPM. Such drives are essential in high random performance applications. The 10000 RPM HDDs work in storage capacities of between 300 GB and 900GB, while the 15000 RPM HDDs work in storage capacities ranging between 146GB and 600GB. Their enterprise capacity HDDs can ship in a form factor of 2.5 inches or 3.5 inches in a maximum of 4TB storage capacities at 7200RPM. Such drives are meant for huge data storages.
Their enterprise value HDDs provide up to 3TB capacity and 3.5inch of energy efficiency. Disk drives in this category provide low-cost huge storage for unstructured cloud data. Seagate Terascale HDDs categories are available up to a maximum of 4TB with 3.5-inch energy efficiency. Terascale HDDs are designed to give data centers the storage scalability to meet the system demands in low workload throughout the day. Moreover, Seagate offers SSHDs and SSDs solutions for business organizations. These include their Enterprise Turbo SSDH, 600 Pro SSDs and 1200 SSD. The three categories of products provide an alternative to HDDs solutions. Compared to the conventional HDDs, they have higher speed with a maximum of 800GB.
Seagate also offers various types of storage solutions for Client Compute. These include form factors of between 5mm and 9.5mm drive heights with capacities ranging between 250GB and 1TB. The Client Compute solutions include HDDs and SSHDs technologies used to support needs of mobile devices. The devices are used in traditional laptops and tablets. The drives are designed to provide solutions for various performance requirements, sizes, affordability and high storage capability. Seagate also provides desktop HDDs and SSHDs drives with a form factor of 3.5-inch that offer up to 4TB. Desktop drives are designed for PCs applications, personal external storage devices and workstations.
Spinpoint SATA Mobile category has 2.5-inch energy efficiency with 5400RPM. They come in storage capacities of up to 1TB. Their production continues under the Samsung brand name. These drives are designed to achieve optimum video streaming in applications with up to 4TB of storage capacity for the best digital entertainment system. Seagate also produces storage drives in the Non-Compute Client category. These include video 3.5 HDDs, video 2.5 HDDs, and surveillance HDDs. The 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch video HDDs are used in video applications, such as media centers, DVR or gaming consoles. These drives are also designed to attain optimum video streaming performance in applications with 4TB storage capacities.
On the other hand, SV 3.5 HDDs are designed to support high-write workloads for video surveillance systems that are always recording. The products in this category are designed to address the increasing need of surveillance systems with HD streams and up to 3TB data capacities. Seagate provides backup solutions under the companys Backup Plus and Expansion plans, as well as La Cie and Samsung brands. These product lines use the Seagates 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drives that are available in up to 4TB and 1TB of storage capacities in that order.
International Trades
Seagate sells its products in major markets in North and South American regions, Europe and Asia. Since it is the best company in the hard drive industry, Seagate has attained the desired competitive edge across the world. It has been attributed to its brand name that has attained worldwide loyalty for more than three decades. Moreover, Seagate produces disk drives that address storage issues for current technology trends. Customers in the United States and Canada prefer buying Seagate products. Other significant market segments are Europe and Asia. The main competitors of Seagate are Western Digital Corporation, which operates Hitachi Global Storage Technology and Western digital subsidiaries. The second major competitor is Toshiba Corporation.
International trade of Seagate faces major challenges from companies in the industry that provide alternative storage technology. These include flash memory and SSDs that are popular with mobile device applications, such as notebooks, tablets and low capacity portable devices. These include SSDs for rapid processing. However, what makes Seagate dominate the world market in digital storage industry is its ability to produce hard drives that effectively handle huge volumes of data. In addition, the company provides different solutions, depending on the size of data to be stored, shared, or managed. They offer various options for enterprises and individuals. Another important aspect of Seagate disk drives is that they are extremely cheap, and the user can easily retrieve data, store or transfer data.
Sales Operations
Seagate Technology sells their products to its major OEMs, distributors as well as retailers. The geographical market segments in the table below summarize the companys sales revenues for three consecutive fiscal years.
Table1. Sales revenues attributed to suppliers and geographical market segments
Fiscal Years Ended |
|||
June, 2013 |
June 2012 |
June, 2011 |
|
Sales revenues by channel (%) |
|||
OEM |
68% |
72% |
69% |
Distributors |
21% |
21% |
22% |
Retailers |
11% |
7% |
9% |
Sales revenues by geographical market segments |
|||
America |
27% |
26% |
29% |
EMEA |
19% |
19% |
20 |
Asia Pacific |
54% |
55% |
51% |
Supply Chain Management
Seagate products are supplied through OEM customers, distributors and retailers. Typically, OEM customers enter into purchasing agreement with Seagate Technology. The agreement aspects include pricing, discounts and product support among other essential terms and conditions in sales and supply programs of the company. Delivery services are offered upon receipt of the purchasing orders. With limited lead-time, OEM customers may defer many purchase orders without any significant penalties. It encourages customers to buy because risks and inconveniences are minimized. On the other hand, distributors enter into non-exclusive agreements for the resale of Seagate products. They provide the company with non-binding indications of their requirements and delivery schedule plans.
With respect to agreements and related sales programs, distributors have limited protection rights on pricing and returns. Distributors receive quarterly or periodic sales programs in order to promote sales of selected product lines in the same distribution channel. The Seagates retail supply chain consists of the companys branded-storage products sold to retails by Seagate directly or by the companys distributors. It is important to note that Seagate distributors can make sales to retailers. However, those distributors require substantial market support from the company as well as sales incentives and pricing protection programs.
Conclusion
Seagate is a leading producer of electronic storage devices across the world. The main reason is that it has established its brand in the world market with more than two decades of producing HDDs products. The company has been at par with the rapid change in technology. With more than 4 percent of the world market share, Seagate literary controls the word market in data storage industry. However, the rate at which technology changes phases each day poses a threat to Seagate, especially from emerging players who manufacture flash memory devices as alternatives to HDDs. It is important to consider that the more technology advances, the more people and business enterprises appreciate portable storage devices such as flash memories. However, the main advantage of Seagate is that HDDs products are increasingly dominating data storage industry due to their high capabilities and performance. Another thing is that, HDDs are extremely chip and easy to use compared to flash memories. It explains why Seagate still maintains high competitive edge.
Outline
- Seagate is the leading producer of HDDs products for digital data storage.
- Through its effective supply chain management, the company successfully captured the major world market and makes high sales annually.
- Seagate provides electronic storage products for individual users and business enterprises with various options.
- The companys international trades are conducted in South and North American regions, Asia and Europe.
- The main competitors of the company in the world market are Western Digital Corporation and Toshiba.
- Companies that produce alternative storage facilities like flash memory devices also pose competitive challenge
- In terms of sales, the Seagate receives the largest sales revenue from American market region, Asia and Europe.
- The supply chain management of Seagate targets its OEM customers, distributors and retailers who are their major suppliers to the market.
- In conclusion, Seagate is still the leading producer of HDDs products. Even though several alternative storage products, such as flash memory, could interfere with their market, Seagate HDDs products still have more advantages, especially for enterprises due to their effectiveness and affordability.
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