Today, Seagate Technology announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire MetaLINCS, a technology leader in the fast-growing E-Discovery market. MetaLINCS's innovative, patent-pending software helps companies respond to litigation and regulatory issues that require them to search large volumes of electronic data for relevant information. MetaLINCS will become part of the Seagate Services Group and support its mission to help business customers protect and manage valuable company information. Financial terms were not disclosed.

According to Gartner analysts Debra Logan and John Bace in the report, "The Emerging E-Discovery Market," published on July 18, 2007, "Changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, along with the ever-increasing reliance on electronic documentation in business, will have wide-ranging effects on the IT profession and IT vendors in 2007 and 2008. IT will be called on to account for elements of their infrastructure and the location of live and backup data as never before."

"Today's announcement represents another strategic step for the Seagate Services Group and further reinforces our commitment to providing customers with innovative technology-based services and solutions that advance their businesses," said Mark Grace, senior vice president and general manager, Seagate Services Group. "The addition of MetaLINCS's solutions will provide our customers with the tools to respond to litigation and compliance requests and help to reduce enterprise E-Discovery costs."

MetaLINCS's enterprise-class E-Discovery software automatically analyzes emails, documents and associated metadata, and presents visual analysis of people, conversations, concepts and communication patterns. Founded in 2003, MetaLINCS is a privately held company with more than 50 employees. Ramon Nunez, CEO of MetaLINCS, will join the Seagate Services senior management team and will lead the Seagate Services Group's E-Discovery business unit.

"We are thrilled to be joining the Seagate Services Group," said Nunez. "The synergy of our missions and cultures will further strengthen our focus on helping corporations and law firms leverage E-Discovery for strategic decision-making during large-scale litigation, mergers and acquisitions, and regulatory response projects."

MetaLINCS is the most recent acquisition for the Seagate Services Group. In 2007, Seagate purchased EVault, an award winning provider of online backup and archive solutions for small and mid sized enterprises, and in 2005, Seagate purchased Action Front (now Seagate Recovery Services), a leading provider of data recovery and data migration services. These acquisitions provide Seagate with growing opportunities in the data protection and management solutions market and are highly scalable with Seagate's technology portfolio and market expertise.

With the addition of MetaLINCS's E-Discovery platform, Seagate Services is able to offer corporations, law firms, and litigation service partners a technology leading analytics engine along with one stop sourcing for archive, recovery and collection, review tools and services inclusive of EVault's Insight E-Discovery services.

Following the MetaLINCS acquisition, the Seagate Services Group will provide the following primary solutions:

• E-Discovery solutions targeted at addressing a growing market need to retrieve and analyze large volumes of data in support of litigation and compliance requirements
• Complete business continuity, compliance and disaster recovery services with high availability, secure backup and recovery of business-critical data
• A wide range of data recovery, data migration and data accessibility solutions to meet the needs of enterprise, small/medium businesses and consumers