Storage solutions provider Seagate Technology has renewed a strategic cooperation agreement with Chinese language internet search provider Baidu.

The agreement covers the fields of information technology, big data analysis and advanced storage system development and implementation.   Under the existing agreement between the two firms signed in September 2014, Baidu would give priority to Seagate when selecting storage products and solutions, and Seagate would give advanced access to products, services and support to Baidu, as well as assign a dedicated team of engineers to the company.   The cooperation between the two parties builds on this, with Seagate providing double the amount of technical cooperation and closer links to Baidu for its business needs.

With regard to new products, Baidu will be one of the Internet users in China implementing Seagate's new storage products.

The two sides will jointly develop customised systems to meet Baidu business needs.

In addition, the procurement model for both companies will be further upgraded to save costs for each side. The collaboration between Seagate and Baidu aims to give both companies an edge in the era of big data.

International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that by 2025, the global data sphere will grow to 163ZB, which is 10 times the 16.1ZB data generated in 2016.

By then, nearly 20% of the data in the global data sphere will be critical to our daily lives and nearly 10% of that will be hypercritical.

This data will unlock unique user experiences and a new world of business opportunities.

How to effectively store and make use of massive data, therefore, becomes critical. Baidu is applying Seagate drives for its proprietary data center and public cloud platform.

Seagate won the “Baidu Data Center 2016 Outstanding Partner Award” at the Baidu AI Developer Conference, and became the only provider who won this award among three major component (CPU, memory, hard disk) providers. “We've been placing great emphasis on the mutual development and close cooperation with Baidu,” says BS Teh, Seagate Technology senior vice president of global sales and sales operations. “As the top AI technology enterprise with leading data center technology worldwide, Baidu attached great importance to technology and welcomes innovation and solutions with open arms,” says Zhang Yaqin, Baidu ​president.

“Baidu and Seagate have maintained close relations since 2014, and established close technological cooperation in the field of SMR, cloud storage and Helium hard disk drives, this contributes to the reduction of storage cost and improvement of storage quality as well as the enhanced competitiveness for Baidu,” Zhang says.

“In the future, we also look forward to deepening cooperation with Seagate in order to solve various storage challenges in the era of big data, improve storage quality, efficiency and reliability, provide stronger support to the development of both companies as well.