Seagate Technology Inc said last year that it wanted to diversify into software, and it was assumed that the company would confine itself to developers of storage-related software. But yesterday it announced it had definitive agreement to acquire Crystal Computer Services Inc of Vancouver, British Columbia for about $18.6m in shares, and Crystal is a supplier of Windows-based report writers with its Crystal Reports line of data access and reporting tools. Crystal Reports is bundled with Microsoft Corp’s Visual Basic Professional Edition, Peoplesoft Corp’s personnel and financial packages, and will be bundled with Borland International Inc’s dBase for Windows when it ships later this year. Crystal will remain in Vancouver as a wholly owned subsidiary.
