Seagate starts selling directly to large customers

Seagate has reportedly started selling products directly to big-name customers in larger quantities than ever before as businesses look to lower the costs of data centers. Companies like Amazon, eBay, Google, and Yahoo have all cut out the middleman and are willing to roll up their sleeves to save money.

"We are seeing more and more of the direct purchases from companies with huge data sets," said Seagate CEO Stephen Luczo. Simply put, more companies are willing to meddle with their own hardware, rather than buy prebuilt systems from manufacturers like HP or Dell.

That puts PC makers in a tight spot, forcing them to compete against suppliers for large volume business -- but Seagate isn't complaining. The storage company reported a 33% increase in second-quarter revenue from a year ago, with a profit of $533 million.