Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX), a world leader in storage solutions, and Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd, one of China’s largest Internet services companies, today signed a Strategic Partnership Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for cooperation in the field of information technology.

As one of China’s leading providers of Internet value-added services, Tencent is devoted to improving the quality of human life through Internet services. The company provides two core services, including social media platforms and digital content, with “Connection” as its strategic target. Now the QQ instant messaging (IM) platform has 861 million monthly active user accounts, while the WeChat platform has 938 million active users. Services like messaging, digital content, entertainment and finance have posed a great challenge to the effective and reliable storage infrastructure.

Tencent will regard Seagate as a key supplier of storage solutions, and Seagate will treat Tencent as a Strategic Partner and set up a special service team for Tencent. Also, both companies will carry out an all-round and in-depth cooperation covering products and technology, and will work together to drive market development activities.

The product and technology cooperation between the two companies will cover Seagate’s full line of enterprise solutions, including mission critical hard disk drives (HDD), nearline HDDs, cloud drives, archive drives and solid-state drives (SSD). To further consolidate the technical leadership of both firms, Seagate and Tencent will set up joint projects, including jointly testing new drives, research and development of new storage technologies and products, such as high-capacity and high-performance HDDs, develop drive health-management solutions and conduct hard drive application analysis, tailor-made to specific Tencent businesses. The companies also will communicate on new products and technologies on a regular basis to realize targeted product development and optimization, and expand market share based on new market trends.

According to “Data Age 2025” Whitepaper issued by IDC, the global datasphere will grow to 163 zettabytes by 2025, a tenfold increase from 2016. All of this data will unlock unique user experiences and a new world of business opportunities. This huge amount of data and the rapid growth of real-time information creates a greater demand for data storage and management, as well as providing a promising new market for both customer-facing and background enterprises.

“New data is offering enterprises more effective operational capabilities, and changing every aspect of people’s lives,” said B.S. Teh, senior vice president of global sales and sales operations at Seagate. “Today, we take great pleasure in setting up a strategic partner relationship with Tencent. The two parties will collaborate with each other, constantly developing and optimizing storage solutions for Tencent-specific applications so as to provide users with a better data- application experience. We hope that the customized service and joint research and development activities covering various storage solutions can help Tencent perfect their data services, and at the same time, promote Seagate’s delivery capabilities from technology to service.”

“Tencent has been providing a wide variety of innovative internet services since its inception,” said Tom Bie, general manager of technical engineering group at Tencent Technology. “The extreme volume of data produced by QQ, WeChat, online games, financial services and cloud services is directly correlated with these applications. The joint cooperation between Seagate and Tencent is an inevitable corollary of our business development. We look forward to a dramatic development of our products, services and market, not only within China, but also in the international arena through this deep collaboration.”