Seagate has formed a cloud group to provide storage for big service providers. The new unit will offer different levels of storage equipment along with backup as a service for operators dealing with large amounts of data.

The Cloud Systems and Solutions group includes systems for high-performance computing (HPC) for providers taking a do-it-yourself approach, and those wanting off the shelf products or services. The storage company also delivered new products including a big device for HPC.

Seagate is positioning itself as the only company that sells everything from hard drives and solid state storage units all the way up through external storage devices and subsystems to cloud services - which could be a good response to a diversifying market. 

“The overall volume of digital bits  created, replicated and consumed across the United States alone will be 44 zettabytes by 2020 [according to IDC research],” said Jamie Lerner, president of the new Seagate division. The challenge is to and make this data available on responsive storage systems for big data analysis, but it’s not clear where the bulk of that storage will be, as cloud providers and enterprise departments jockey for position.

Seagate’s new division wants to cover all the bases. It will sell fully configured HPC solutions, such as the new ClusterStor 9000. It will also sell components, along with reference architectures and open source expertise, for organisations that take a DIY approach to their storage, building private clouds.

OEMs will be offered white-label custom systems built from modules using Seagates Open Intelligent Infrastructure, while those who need to pick up services and run, can opt for cloud backup and disaster recovery services from the storage giant.

The ClusterStor 9000 is a development of the Xyratex enterprise storage aqcuired by Seagate, integrating its Lustre ("Linux cluster") technology into a system designed for HPC. Seagate also announced that the ClusterStor secure data appliance (SDA) has gained certification to the US government's ICD 503 policies, and its EVAult backup and recovery appliance has been upgraded to 100TB of usable capacity.