The mergers come thick and fast. Now news that Seagate has bought Mirra, a consumer back-up drive, which has been a critical success in the “PC” market. The company recently introduced a $800-400 GB monster. Given that most of the hard drive makers are struggling to eke out a living, this doesn’t come as a surprise. Mirra was started by Tim Bucher, former Apple executive, who is having some issues with Jobs and his company. Everyone is searching for ways to “value add” to their product line, and thus goose-up the profits. Maxtor, for instance, came-up with a similar digital drive. I get a feeling, given Seagate’s retail presence, Mirra back-up drives will get more retail presence. No details on the price-tag! It must have been a big one — because Sequoia Capital pumped in $8 million into the Sunnyvale start-up. Update: According to Venturewire, the Mirra-Seagate deal was between $15 million nd $30 million.
OM – there’s a big difference between the Mirra server and the Maxtor drive. Mirra not only backs up all of the PCs on your network and allows those backups to be selectively shared between network users. It also provides a drop-dead simple way to share files securely with anyone over the web. I think this was the deal-maker that attracted Seagate. Selling hard drives is a tough business. Selling secure file sharing systems that also provide automatic backup with total transparency – that’s a value business. I think this is one of the smartest acquisitions I’ve seen of late.
totally. maxtor is one of those companies that can take gold and turn it into lead. but the point i was trying to make was the whole “value” added game.
Um, I think you mean Tim Bucher, not Butler. After his original time at Apple and before his more recent stint at Apple, he also headed hardware development at WebTV.
phillip, thanks for that. sorry. about that.
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