Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX) and Acronis have announced a strategic partnership to equip Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and large organizations with solutions for archival storage — secure, scalable, and cost-effective — in a context where the AI acceleration boosts data volume and stretches traditional cost and compliance models. The collaboration results in Acronis Archival Storage, an S3-compatible service for long-term retention of low-access information, integrated into the Acronis platform and supported by Seagate Lyve® Cloud Object Storage.
The announcement highlights a need across sectors: retaining large amounts of data for years — due to regulation, auditing, or historical value — without skyrocketing costs and without compromising security. Unlike other providers that charge usage with API and traffic fees, Acronis emphasizes offering a controlled and predictable cost model, especially important for MSPs with tight margins and multi-tenant environments.
“Acronis has been at the forefront of cybersecurity and backup, including secure data management in hybrid clouds,” stated Melyssa Banda, senior vice president of Edge Storage and Services at Seagate. “By joining forces, Seagate and Acronis can leverage their global reach to deliver highly secure storage solutions that the new AI frontier demands — empowering companies to better protect their data from cloud to edge to endpoint.”
For Acronis, the fit is natural: “Seagate’s leadership in high-capacity storage aligns with our goal of providing MSPs with an integrated archival storage that prioritizes security, compliance, and cost efficiency,” affirmed Gaidar Magdanurov, President of Acronis. “With more than 60% of organizations managing more than 1 PB of data, archiving is necessary to keep costs in check. Our partners will be able to address the growing demand for long-term retention and meet compliance, legal, and security requirements for their clients.”
What’s announced: S3-compatible archive, predictable cost, and “enterprise-grade” security
The product resulting from the partnership — Acronis Archival Storage — is defined as a S3-compatible solution targeting cold/archival data, integrated into the Acronis platform, and powered by Seagate Lyve® Cloud Object Infrastructure. Its goal is to provide MSPs and IT departments with:
- Long-term data retention with regulatory compliance.
- Controlled cost model (no API or egress surcharges), reducing uncertainty and simplifying chargeback to end customers.
- Enterprise-grade security: encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access control (RBAC), identity and access management (IAM), immutability options, and support for ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
- Native integration with Acronis’s cyber-protection capabilities (protection, detection, response, recovery), including copy orchestration and near-instant recovery.
This approach is designed for MSPs — managing multi-tenant portfolios under SLA contracts and cost pressures — and for regulated sectors like healthcare, finance, legal, utilities, or public administration, where retention spans years or decades and audits are routine.
Why now: the AI data surge and compliance pressures
The backdrop is clear: AI has skyrocketed data creation — logs, telemetry, datasets, media, security snapshots — while regulators increase demands on privacy, resilience, and sector-specific retention (clinical records, financial history, legal documentation). Simultaneously, threats like ransomware make immutability and recovery minimum essentials. The result: more organizations with petabyte-scale data and budgets that can’t keep pace.
In this context, archiving is a strategy: moving cold data to affordable and secure object storage, maintaining low latency for retrieval when needed, and demonstrating compliance during audits.
Components and guarantees: Lyve® Cloud + Acronis platform
Seagate Lyve® Cloud Object Storage acts as a S3-compatible storage layer, offering the guarantees MSPs and regulators expect:
- Encryption of data in transit and at rest.
- RBAC and IAM for role separation and least privilege.
- Immutability as an option — key for mitigating ransomware and malicious deletes.
- Certifications: support for ISO 27001 and SOC 2, widely recognized standards in security and governance.
Meanwhile, the Acronis platform orchestrates the full cyber-protection cycle — identify, prevent, detect, respond, remediate, and recover — with a native integration designed for hybrid environments. Integration with Seagate’s storage enables MSPs to deliver a coherent archival service, with unified controls and telemetry, avoiding “franken-stacks” that increase costs and complexity.
Cost model: predictable for chargeback without surprises
Predictability is highly valued by MSPs. Acronis emphasizes that it will not pass on API costs or egress surcharges, common in cloud storage, which can break margins when access patterns are irregular or many clients upload in parallel. The controlled model simplifies:
- MSP budget.
- Chargeback scheme to clients — avoiding “surprise” bills from sporadic activity.
- Storage decision-making (when to archive, how long to retain, how to recover).
The combination of predictable cost and S3 compatibility also simplifies migrations and dual-vendor strategies without rebuilding applications.
Who it’s for: MSPs and sectors with mandatory retention
The solution targets MSPs operating hybrid/multitenant infrastructures and IT departments with retention obligations:
- Healthcare: medical records, imaging, consents, and records with enhanced privacy.
- Finance and insurance: statements, transactions, and communications with audit requirements.
- Legal: files, evidence, and probative documentation.
- Utilities and public sector: sensor data, SCADA, tenders, and administrative files.
Where data can be cooled off but cannot disappear, a secure and economical archive is a critical piece.
Security and compliance: immutability, identity, and auditability
The partnership identifies pillars as:
- End-to-end encryption (in transit and at rest).
- IAM/RBAC for traceability and role separation.
- Configurable immutability, useful against ransomware and human errors.
- Compliance with frameworks like ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
For many audits, the how matters as much as the what: who accessed, when, and what was modified. Integrating logging and identity management with the storage layer simplifies compliance testing.
Operation for MSPs: multi-tenant without losing control
MSPs require isolation between clients, central visibility, and automation. Using the Acronis platform as brain and Lyve® Cloud for persistence enables:
- Client-specific policies (retention, immutability, encryption, access).
- Horizontal scaling with cost control.
- Fast recovery with no penalties for API/egress.
- Compliance reports and reusable capacity in audits.
For the end customer, the benefit is less friction: clear SLAs, tested recoverability, and costs aligned with value (retaining what’s needed without paying for “air”).
A measurable impact (and a petabyte-scale context)
According to Acronis, more than 60% of organizations manage over 1 PB of data. At that scale, percentages matter: storage optimization or a more friendly cost model can free up budget for security, training, or AI compute. Meanwhile, Seagate emphasizes its industrial scale — more than 4.5 trillion gigabytes delivered over four decades — underscoring capacity to support global archiving projects.
The coherence between the cyber-protection layer (Acronis) and object layer (Seagate) introduces operational efficiencies: fewer ad hoc integrations, fewer silos, and more time to improve processes instead of fixing them.
Risks and realism: what the alliance doesn’t change on its own
- Data governance: each organization must decide what to retain, how long, and under what legal basis.
- Classification: archiving does not mean lumping everything together; criticality and lifecycle-based classification remains key.
- Operational: recovery tests, key rotation, access reviews, and training are still mandatory.
- Sovereignty: where applicable, jurisdictions, data localization, and cross-border data flows must be verified.
Still, the partnership reduces the technical and economic friction around archiving, often the “silent sibling” of backup… until an auditor or lawyer demands it.
Conclusion: archive ready for AI, with security and costs under control
The Seagate–Acronis partnership delivers a pragmatic message: long-term retention is inevitable and must be secure, compliant, and financially sustainable. Acronis Archival Storage, supported by Lyve® Cloud and S3, aims to balance the equation for MSPs and large organizations: enterprise security, predictable costs, and simplified management in a world where AI drives the need to save more and longer.
Governance and operational work remain, but the foundation stone — robust object layer and cyber-protection platform — is laid. For managed service providers, having an integrated archive that doesn’t “break” your P&L at month’s end can be the difference between scaling clients or stagnating.