[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]EVault, Inc. (www.evault.com/ap/), a Seagate Company (NASDAQ:STX), today announced it has been named a finalist in the 2014 Microsoft Application Development Partner of the Year Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft Corp. partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

“We began integrating our cloud storage services into the Azure platform less than two years ago, so to be named a finalist for the 2014 Microsoft Application Development Award is a great honor,” said Terry Cunningham, president and general manager, EVault. “EVault customers on Azure enjoy exceptional business value - reduced costs and operational expenses; simplified vendor management and contract complexity; and mitigated risk by eliminating unreliable tape backup technology. We thank Microsoft for recognizing EVault as an important part of the Microsoft Partner Network.”

Awards were presented in multiple categories, with winners chosen from a set of more than 2,800 entrants from 117 different countries worldwide. EVault was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services in application development.

“We are pleased to recognize EVault as a finalist of the 2014 Microsoft Application Development Award,” said Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. “EVault has delivered outstanding value to our mutual customers and is a shining example of the excellence we see in our talented ecosystem of Microsoft partners.”

The Application Development Partner of the Year Award recognizes exceptional innovation from an application development partner that furthers Microsoft's partner-driven platform vision and delivers exceptional customer business value. The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions during the past year.

EVault announced EVault® Backup Services for Windows Azure (http://goo.gl/9iMTpH) in January. Building on the successful relationship between Microsoft Corp. and EVault, the service extends data protection (www.evault.com/ap/products) to cross-platform server data, operating systems, applications, and databases while delivering the flexibility, scalability, economy, and offsite protection of the cloud. EVault Backup Services for Windows Azure is available from Windows Azure data centers worldwide.

EVault Backup Services for Windows Azure complements existing business infrastructures, simplifying backup and recovery (www.evault.com/ap/products)of heterogeneous environments to the Windows Azure cloud. The service provides robust cross-platform support including Windows, Linux, IBM i and UNIX; multi-hypervisor support including VMware ESXi and Windows Server with Hyper-V; and granular restore capabilities for core Microsoft applications such as Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server, as well as Oracle databases. Because it can protect virtually any workload on a single cloud platform, EVault Backup Services for Windows Azure enables businesses to consolidate vendor contract issues and costs while also reducing risk.