SEAGATE LAUNCHES DESIGN SERVICE CENTERS TO DELIVER COMPLETE DESIGN AND TIME-TO-MARKET EXPERTISE.

Seagate Technology has announced the opening of its Design Service Centers (DSC), a group of facilities created to offer a full range of research and development, design, and testing services to all Seagate customers. With locations in Colorado, Minnesota, and Singapore, each center is equipped with the appropriate testing labs and technologies to assist Seagate customers through each step of the design and development process for their storage-based solutions.

DSC helps Seagate customers transform innovative product ideas into reliable storage-driven products. By working with DSC and solving problems early in the lab instead of later in development or out in the field, customers are assured that they will be able to bring products to market faster, with lower overall cost and greater reliability. Because of the expected continued growth rate in market segments that require storage, as well as the requests of Seagate customers, the facilities that were previously available only to Seagate's largest OEMs are now open and available to all Seagate customers worldwide.

Many leading OEM companies such as Microsoft have already taken advantage of Seagate's services in the consumer electronics space.

"Microsoft's successful launch of the Xbox video game system can certainly be attributed in part to the excellent qualification cycle that occurred with Seagate's U Series disc drives," said Todd Holmdahl, general manager of Xbox Hardware at Microsoft. "As the first gaming console to include a built-in hard drive, special considerations for the employment, use, and testing of the disc drive had to be considered. Seagate's service and support was invaluable from the start of our relationship with them."

"The market for personal, enterprise, and consumer electronics systems continues to grow with demand for hard drives remaining positive at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5 percent through 2005. Companies that can differentiate their product with solutions that are truly optimized for their respective markets will be able to compete more successfully," said David Reinsel, research manager at IDC. "Seagate delivers unique solutions for each of these markets. Whether creating enterprise drives that need to run in 24 by 7 by forever environments, personal ATA drives running in blade servers or NAS systems, or within a Personal video recorder or audio jukebox, it is clear that customers seeking assistance with their own designs can benefit from leveraging Seagate's hard drive design expertise."

The opening of DSC marks the first time a company that produces hard disc drives has opened its doors to its entire customer base to assist in all aspects of product development.

DSC provides comprehensive testing facilities to test for a number of applications and environments.

-- Thermal Performance Testing -- Measures internal system temperatures and identifies potential cooling issues that helps improve long-term system reliability.

-- Shock and Vibration Testing -- Simulates device response to real-world handling (or mishandling) and delivers a more robust product.

-- Anechoic Chamber -- Measures the amount and quality of acoustic output to improve acoustic performance.

-- Compatibility Lab -- Tests compatibility of the entire solution, helping all features work at peak performance. With a wide assortment of satellite downlinks and cable inputs, our engineers can also test your product with many leading program services.

-- Rotational Vibration Index Testing -- Rotational Vibration Index (RVI) testing minimizes performance degradation that results from rotational vibration in multi-drive servers and storage subsystems.

-- Packaging Design -- Assists with developing specialized shipping cartons and product packaging for hard-drive capable devices.

-- Care and Handling Training -- Teaches proper handling and shipping of hard-drive capable devices. This reduces returns and improves reliability.

The consumer electronics space is among the most exciting for development of various new solutions, from devices such as personal video recorders (PVRs) to the latest gaming consoles, as well as more sophisticated automated home control systems and Internet Access (IA) devices. In this new space, with these new applications, proper design development and testing is critical in assuring the best final products possible.

Seagate was the first hard drive maker to recognize the emergence of the Consumer Electronics storage market, becoming the sole supplier of hard drives to Microsoft WebTV when it first shipped in 1997. Today Seagate ships more drives for Consumer Electronics than any other hard drive maker. Seagate hard drives are the choice of all of the top ten Consumer Electronics makers, powering consumer brands Echostar Dish Network, Sony, Microsoft, RCA, DirecTV, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Hughes, and many more.

Seagate is a leader in Enterprise storage, with a list of industry firsts that is unmatched by the competition. Over the past two years alone, Seagate exercises its leadership with the introduction of the world's fastest disc drive (Cheetah X15), the world's highest capacity disc drive (Barracuda 180), and the lowest cost SCSI disc drive (Barracuda 36ES). Design Service Centers ensures that customers can gain access to this kind of technology and engineering leadership.