[Sultan]

Seagate and Samsung have announced a "broad strategic alignment," as part of which Seagate will take over Samsung's hard-drive operations in exchange for a cool $1.375 billion (paid half in cash, half in Seagate stock). There's quite a bit more to this deal than just Samsung's HDD business changing hands, though. Here's a list of the "major elements of the agreement," in the two companies' words:

• Samsung combining its hard disk drive (HDD) operations into Seagate
• Extending and enhancing the existing patent cross-license agreement between the companies
• A NAND flash memory supply agreement under which Samsung will provide Seagate with its market-leading semiconductor products for use in Seagate’s enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), solid state hybrid drives and other products
• A disk drive supply agreement under which Seagate will supply disk drives to Samsung for PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics
• Expanded cooperation between the companies to co-develop enterprise storage solutions
• Samsung receiving significant equity ownership in Seagate
• A shareholder agreement under which an executive of Samsung will be nominated to join Seagate’s Board of Directors

Seagate, Samsung combine hard-drive units in $1.4B deal