Seagate Technology receives ETP approval for second company-wide workforce training proposal.

Contact: Maria Wayne,
Director, Leadership Development
Seagate Technology
920 Disc Drive Scotts Valley, CA 95303
Telephone: (831) 439-2268
Fax: (408) 721-1584
Grant Amount: $1,530,000

Founded in 1979, Seagate Technology, headquartered in Scotts Valley, is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard computer disc drives, providing products for a wide-range of applications, including enterprise, desktop, mobile computing, and consumer electronics. Computer disc drives have extended their adoption beyond traditional computing to include hand-held media players, digital video recorders for TV, home networks, gaming consoles, PDAs, and media servers, and these new products are fundamentally changing the way people use information. Also many companies are moving to “Cloud Computing” which is shaping up as the future architecture for storing electronic data. Cloud storage is essentially a way of creating storage infrastructure via the internet in which data management is automated to a large degree and efficiency is paramount. An overall shift towards cloud computing has ramped up the demand for offsite data storage centers increasing the need for enterprise level hard disc drives.

Seagate contends that driven by the growth of cloud computing, cloud storage is quickly growing from a relatively small percentage of the overall IT market to a sustainable and significant opportunity. In response, the company has invested heavily in new product development spending over $1 billion in research and development in 2010, resulting in the creation of an extensive pipeline of new products and services. At the same time, Seagate’s senior management team has instituted a cultural transformation for its customer facing workforce to improve the company’s service, quality, reliability, delivery time, and order accuracy by providing a common language and a consistent methodology for how its employees meet customer requirements.

Under this ETP agreement Seagate will deliver training to expand employee skills so that they gain expertise to work in technological areas enabling them to adapt to changing business requirements and to improve their productivity. This training proposal will deliver a spectrum of skills that include, manufacturing, continuous improvement, business, and computer skills.