Macro-Trend Analysis

This will be a Macro-trend analysis on the hard drive sector of Seagate Technology. The solid state hard drive portion of Seagate's organization will be analyzed using the six Macro-trends of natural environment, technological environment, regulatory environment, economic environment, sociocultural environment, and demographic environment.

The natural environment considers how the environment will impact the production of solid state hard drives, kind of like how the rainfall affects the grass. It considers all of the things that nature has control over and not the organization. The main component in solid state hard drives are integrated circuits and the most important part of an IC is silicon so the supply of silicon is very important to this industry. Pure silicon is also used to create solar panels and as oil prices increase the demand for solar power will also increase which can cause the price of silicon to increase. Seagate Technologies will have to keep a watch on this crucial supply item and try to secure a supply that will last for the foreseeable future.

The technological environment is the effect that technological advances have on the industry. Most of these advances have come because of the computer and invention of the IC chip but that will not make it easier for Seagate to properly forecast. Advances in hardware have made products smaller and faster but that is just a small piece of the puzzle when analyzing technology and its future prospects. One problem Seagate might face with its solid state hard drive is the evolution of cloud computing. Cloud computing is the use of small interface computers to access a large network of computers that do all of the data transactions. These large networks of computers and servers will need an equally large storage capacity and the current price of solid state hard drives make them cost prohibitive in these systems.

The regulatory environment is made up of the regulations and laws that an organizations operates in. The regulatory guidance can get especially confusing when managing a multinational corporation like Seagate Technologies. Regulation can also be helpful to an organization that is trying to limit or prevent competition and it can also be hurtful like when the United Nations developed the Kyoto Protocol in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. Deregulation also has the potential to help or hurt Seagate Technologies and that is why managers must analyze trends, forecast for the future, and lobby the government to prevent unfair or surprise regulatory guidelines from being established.

The economic environment is a combination of the many things that make up the amount of money that is available. This includes but is not limited to personal income and tax rates, business income and tax rates, and government spending. Most solid state hard drives are sold to individuals so the amount of personal income has a very large impact on solid state drive sales. By forecasting spending trends and estimating the amount of expendable income Seagate can determine which market will be best suited for its solid state drives. Government spending also plays a role in solid state sales because a few high end systems are also being sold to the government