A New Spin on Storage
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This past year has definitely seen some changes in the world of data storage and backup. With several company mergers to contend with, the industry's face is barely recognizable. So who's left out there and what can we expect in the future as a result of all of the changes?
A series of mergers over the past year or so has left dramatic changes making it nearly unrecognizable by comparison. And I'm not talking about small companies. I'm talking about industry leaders, most notably Seagate's acquisition of Maxtor, however, several other notable mergers also included companies like Sun Microsystems, StorageTek, and Hewlett-Packard, just to name a few. Similar changes can be felt in the backup and recovery industry, but this comes as no real shocker since the two industries have long since been closely related.
The remainder of 2006 and the upcoming year should show us huge advancements in these industries. New technologies and expanded product lines should provide consumers with much better, more cost effective solutions. There are two basic benefits to these types of mergers. The first of these is shared resources. It's much cheaper for a large corporation to acquire existing manufacturing facilities than it is to build them new, so these mergers usually result in large expansions that may not have been plausible otherwise. The second is shared manpower. The combination of two companies usually results in better research and development that leads to much better innovation and quicker advancements for both existing technologies and the invention of new ones.
As with any major change it's only fair to sit down and analyze the possibilities. What kind of effects could a merger between Seagate and Maxtor have on the storage industry? Will this benefit consumers as a whole, or will it prove to be detrimental by creating yet another over-sized monopoly? Another important question that needs to be asked is, "How will a union between these two affect future development?" In this fast-paced field, consumers consistently seek the latest and greatest technology. Will the new SeagateMaxtor be able to effectively meet these demands? Only time will tell for sure, but we can make some relatively safe speculations.
Next: Seagate Takes a Giga-byte out of Maxtor >>
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