For $25,000, which gives it no say in the technology, Seagate is now a corporate sponsor of the OpenStack Foundation and a member of the Open Compute Project (OCP).

It's looking for partners to advance its storage fortunes given the data explosion and the cloud's role in storing that data.

Thinking perhaps of its Open Vault product, it says it "will help cloud builders develop more scalable, customizable solutions using open platforms while reducing operating costs and providing benefits for consumers in the marketplace." What technology it may dangle and when is unclear.

Its statement had Seagate marketing VP Scott Horn say, "Today's explosion of data has forced cloud and Big Data customers to constantly look for ways to improve their storage infrastructure while lowering their total cost of ownership."