History (1997): Seagate’s Goal Being Revenue of $19.5 Billion in 2001

Last February, Alan Shugart, COB and CEO of Seagate Technology told the Asian press, during a visit to Bangkok, Thailand: “My goal for the company for the year 2001 is to have revenues of $19.5 billion.”

The company had $8.6 billion in revenues for the last fiscal year ending June, 1996.

“In the past 17 years we have produced 100 million disk drives. We think we’ll produce the next 100 million in 3 years,” added Shugart.

He also indicated that software will be a much bigger portion of sales by 2001 than it is now, about 5x larger than the $210 million per year portion it currently represents.

Seagate is Thailand’s largest private employer with 37,000 people, and Shugart said that it will expand to 50,000 by the end of the century.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 111, published on April 1997.