Seagate Technology

Seagate Technology (then called Shugart Technology) was incorporated on November 1, 1978, and commenced operations with co-founders Al Shugart, Tom Mitchell, Doug Mahon, Finis Conner and Syed Iftikar in October 1979.[3] The company came into being when Conner approached Shugart with the idea of starting a new company to develop 5.25-inch HDDs which Conner predicted would be a coming economic boom in the disk drive market.[4] The name was changed to Seagate Technology to avoid a lawsuit from Xerox's subsidiary Shugart Associates (also founded by Shugart).[5]

Seagate ST-225, cover removed

The company's first product, the 5-megabyte ST-506, was released in 1980. It was the first hard disk to fit the 5.25-inch form factor of the Shugart "mini-floppy" drive. It used a Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) encoding[6][7] and was later released in a 10-megabyte version, the ST-412. With this Seagate secured a contract as a major OEM supplier for the IBM XT, IBM's first personal computer to contain a hard disk. The large volumes of units sold to IBM fueled Seagate's early growth. In their first year, Seagate shipped $10 million worth of units to consumers. By 1983, the company shipped over 200,000 units for revenues of $110 million.[4]

In 1983, Al Shugart was replaced as president by then chief operating officer, Tom Mitchell, in order to move forward with corporate restructuring in the face of a changing market. Shugart continued to oversee corporate planning. By this point, the company had a 45% market share of the single-user hard drive market, with IBM purchasing 60% of the total business Seagate was doing at the time.[4]

In 1989, Seagate acquired Control Data's (CDC) Imprimis Technology, CDC's disk storage division, resulting in a combined market share of 43 percent.[8][9] Seagate benefited from Imprimis' head technology and reputation while Imprimis gained access to Seagate's lower component and manufacturing costs.[8]

In September 1991, Tom Mitchell resigned as president under pressure from the board of directors, with Al Shugart reassuming presidency of the company. Shugart refocused the company on its more lucrative markets and on mainframe drives instead of external drives. He also pulled away from the practice of outsourcing the production of components overseas, which allowed Seagate to better keep up with demand as the demand for PCs increased extremely rapidly in 1993 across the market.[10] This included a domestic partnership with Corning Inc., which began using a new glass ceramic compound to manufacture disk substrates.[11] In 1991, Seagate also introduced the Barracuda HDD, the industry's first hard disk with a 7200-RPM spindle speed.[12]

In May 1993, Seagate became the first company to cumulatively ship 50 million HDDs over its firm's history.[13] The following year Seagate Technology Inc moved from the Nasdaq exchange to the New York Stock Exchange, trading under the ticker symbol SEG. Upon leaving, the company was the 17th-largest company in terms of trading volume on the Nasdaq exchange.[14] In 1996, Seagate merged with Conner Peripherals to form the world's largest independent hard-drive manufacturer.[15][16] Following the merger, the company began a system of consolidating the components and production methods within its production chain of factories in order to streamline how products were built between plants.[17]

In May 1995, Seagate Technology acquired Frye Computer Systems, a software company based in Boston, Massachusetts.[18] that developed the LAN monitoring software kit The Frye Utilities for Networks,[19] which won PC Magazine's "Editor's Choice" award in 1995.[20]

In 1996, Seagate introduced the industry's first hard disk with a 10,000-RPM spindle speed, the Cheetah 4LP. The product increased to a speed of 15,000-RPM by 2000 with the release of the Cheetah 15X.[21] In May 1997, the High Court of Justice in England awarded Amstrad PLC $93 million in a lawsuit over reportedly faulty disk drives Seagate sold to Amstrad, a British manufacturer and marketer of personal computers.[22] That year Seagate also introduced the first Fibre Channel interface hard drive.[23][24]

In 1997, Seagate experienced a downturn, along with the rest of the industry. In July 1998, Shugart resigned his positions with the company.[25] Stephen J. "Steve" Luczo became the new chief executive officer, also joining the board of directors.[26]

Luczo had joined Seagate Technology in October 1993 as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development.[27] In March 1995, he was appointed Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and chief operating officer of Seagate Software Holdings. In 1996, Luczo led the Seagate acquisition of Conner Peripherals, creating the world's largest disk drive manufacturer and completing the company's strategy of vertical integration and ownership of key disk drive components. In September 1997, he was promoted to the position of President and chief operating officer of Seagate Technology Inc.

In 1998, the board appointed Luczo as the new CEO and Seagate launched a restructuring effort. Historically, Seagate's design centers had been organized around function, with one product line manager in charge of tracking the progress of all programs. In 1998, Luczo and CTO Tom Porter characterized the organizational redesign of design centers into core teams organized around individual projects to meet the corporate objective of faster time to market.[28] As the CEO, Luczo decided to increase investment in technology and to diversify into faster-growing, higher-margin businesses. He decided to implement a highly automated platform strategy for manufacturing. Between 1997 and 2004, Seagate reduced its headcount from approximately 111,000 to approximately 50,000, rationalized its factory footprint from 24 factories to 11 factories and reduced design centers form seven to three. During this period, Seagate's output increased from approximately 9 million drives per quarter to approximately 20 million drives per quarter.

In 1998, the company's Seagate Research facility was also established in Pittsburgh,[29] a $30 million investment that focused on future technologies and prototypes. Technology developed by the center would include devices like the hard drive disk for Microsoft's first Xbox.[30]

In 1999, Seagate shipped its 250 millionth hard drive.[31]

In May 1999, Seagate sold its Network & Storage Management Group (NSMG) to Veritas Software in return for 155 million shares of Veritas' stock. With this deal, Seagate became the largest shareholder in Veritas, with an ownership stake of more than 40%. However, the Seagate board of directors felt that the market was incredibly under pricing Seagate's stock, as was clear from a 200% increase in Veritas stock versus only a 25% increase in Seagate's stock.[32]

In 2000, Seagate became a private company again. Luczo led a management buyout of Seagate, believing that Seagate needed to make significant capital investments to achieve its goals. He decided to turn the company private, since disk drive producers had a hard time obtaining capital for long-term projects.[33]

In early November 1999, Luczo met with representatives of Silver Lake Partners to discuss a major restructuring of Seagate. After two failed attempts to increase Seagate's stock price and unlock its value from Veritas, Seagate's board of directors authorized Luczo to seek advice from Morgan Stanley in October 1999. In early November 1999, Morgan Stanley arranged a meeting between Seagate executives and representatives of Silver Lake Partners.[33] On November 22, 2000, Seagate management, Veritas Software and an investor group led by Silver Lake closed a complex deal taking Seagate private in what was at the time the largest buyout ever of a technology company.[34][35] The total deal, worth about $20 billion, included the sale of its disk-drive operations for $2 billion to an investor group led by Silver Lake Partners. The goal of the deal was to unlock the value of the 33% ownership stake Seagate had in Veritas, which had put the value of Seagate's stock at around $33 billion even though its market cap was only $15 billion.[31] The company was incorporated in Grand Cayman and stayed private until it re-entered the public market in 2002.[36]

Both the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Harvard Business School have written multiple case studies on the Seagate buyout and turnaround. In addition, several leading management books have cited the Seagate turnaround in the contents.

Luczo became the Chairman of the board of directors of Seagate Technology on June 19, 2002. In 2003, he accepted an invitation from the New York Stock Exchange to join its Listed Companies Advisory Committee.[37]

In 2003, Seagate re-entered the HDD market for notebook computers and provided the 1-inch disk hard drives for the first iPods. This led to a trend of digital devices being created with progressively more and more memory, especially in cameras and music devices.[38] The following year, The New York Times called Seagate "the nation's top maker of hard drives used to store data in computers", as its revenue forecast outpaced Wall Street estimates towards the end of the year.[39]

When the company separated the roles of chairman and CEO in 2004, Luczo resigned as the Seagate CEO on July 3, 2004, but retained his position as Chairman of the board of directors.[27] Bill Watkins became CEO.

At the beginning of 2006, Forbes magazine named Seagate its Company of the Year as the best managed company in the United States. Forbes wrote that, "Seagate is riding the world's gadget boom. Its 1-inch drives are the archives for cameras and MP3 players." It also credited Seagate as being the company that "sparked the personal computer revolution 25 years ago with the first 5.25-inch hard drive for the PC".[40]

In 2007, Seagate created the hybrid drive concept.[41]

In April 2008, Seagate was the first to ship 1 billion HDDs. According to CNet, it took 17 years to ship the first 100 million and 15 years to ship the next 900 million.[42] In 2009, Bill Watkins was released from employment as CEO.[43]

In January 2009, Luczo was asked by the Seagate Board to return as CEO of the company, replacing Bill Watkins. As of the date of his hiring, Seagate was losing market share, facing rapidly declining revenues, was lagging in product delivery with high manufacturing costs, had an excessive operating expense structure and had a balance sheet that was burdened with $2 billion of debt that was due within 2 years. The company's market value was less than $1.5 billion.

Luczo revamped the entire management team, and quickly reorganized the company back to a functional structure after a failed attempt to organize by business units in 2007. Led by a new head of sales, Dave Mosley, a new head of operations and Development, Bob Whitmore, and a new CFO, Pat O'Malley, the team worked to address the multitude of challenges that it faced. By the end of 2009, the company had refinanced its debt and had begun to turn around its operations. In 2010, Seagate reinstated its dividend and began a stock buyback plan.

In 2010, Seagate announced that it was moving its headquarters and most of its staff from Scotts Valley to Cupertino, California.[44]

In June 2010, Seagate released the world's first 3 TB hard drive.[45] In September Seagate released the first portable 1.5 TB hard drive.[46]

In July 2011, the company changed its country of incorporation from the Cayman Islands to Ireland.[47][48]

In December 2011, Seagate acquired Samsung's HDD business.[49]

In 2012, Seagate continued to raise its dividend and repurchased nearly 30% of the company's outstanding shares. In the fiscal year ended June 2012, Seagate had achieved record revenues, record gross margins, record profits and regained its position as the largest disc drive manufacturer, and its market value had increased to over $14 billion. In March Seagate demonstrated the first 1 TB/square inch density hard drive, with the possibility of scaling up to 60 TB by 2030.[50]

In 2013, Seagate was the first HDD company to begin shipment of shingled magnetic recording drives, announcing in September that they had already shipped over 1 million such drives.[51]

In February 2016, Seagate was hit with class action lawsuit over the defective hard drives they sold.[52]

In August 2016, Seagate demonstrated its 60 TB SSD, claimed to be "the largest SSD ever demonstrated", at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara.[53]

In January 2017, Seagate announced the shutdown at Suzhou, China - one of its largest HDD assembly plants.[54]

On July 25, 2017, David "Dave" Mosley was appointed CEO, effective from October 1, 2017.[55]