Pure Storage Debuts New Products, Partner Rewards and Incentives
There's a new addition to the FlashBlade family, new AI-ready infrastructure and a shake-up to the subscription-based Evergreen portfolio.
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The first announcement is a shake-up of Pure Storage’s Evergreen portfolio, which offers a consumption-based service model for storage.
Evergreen Gold, which offers appliance ownership with a subscription to software, hardware and support, is being renamed Evergreen//Forever.
“Evergreen//Forever is the new name for our support structure that allows customers to take advantage of any innovations that we develop,” said Wendy Stusrud, VP, global partner sales at Pure Storage. “In fact, it allows the Pure solution to get younger the longer you have,” said Stusrud. “It will continue to deliver a new software controller [and] non-disruptive upgrades. When a customer subscribes to that model, we’ll continue to deliver any new feature functionality.”
The current Pure as-a-Service model is also getting a new name: Evergreen//One.
“That’s truly a consumption model,” said Stusrud. “We own the gear and the customer continues to drive demand or put new workloads on as they see fit. Using that name Evergreen, we feel it’s really important. Because that’s one of our primary innovations that we delivered to the market many years ago.”
She continued: “Many times our customers get stuck in this migration every 18 months, every three years. We don’t ask our customers to do that. Because of the Evergreen Forever model, they’ll continue to upgrade. It’s a simple solution that gets younger the longer they have it. They can take advantage of the new technology as we deliver it. So the Evergreen portfolio will continue to be a very important pillar for Pure and for our partners.”
The company additionally announced Evergreen//Flex, a new fleet-level Evergreen architecture.
“Evergreen Flex allows the customer to acquire the hardware and a capex model, but then take advantage of the software in a in a subscription model, pay as you go,” said Stusrud. “So they grow and continue to pay for this as soon as those subscriptions as they need. Again, it’s a flexible model allowing customers … to acquire storage solutions and grow with it as they need.”
The FlashBlade//S is the latest release from the FlashBlade file and object platform product line. The new launch, however, offers more than double the density, performance and power efficiency of previous versions.
Most notably, the FlashBlade//S has a modular architecture that disaggregates compute from capacity.
“Disaggregating the compute from the storage and networking allows customers to upgrade or improve or modify the platform as they need,” said Stusrud.
“That’s the wave of the future where we’re going. It’s all about simplicity; it’s all about choice and making sure customers are able to use the technology they have in their data center as they need it instead of having to invest in a single solution or appliance and trying to figure out what they need five years in advance. We are providing flexibility.”
According to IDC, disaggregation of storage platforms provides more flexibility in creating efficient IT infrastructures. It enables administrators to assemble a balance of IT resources for a given workload to minimize costs. It also allows them to perform upgrades on different resources independently as needed.
Stusrud said customers can upgrade the solution non-disruptively, which is important for customers for focusing on sustainability.
“By reducing the footprint, the power and cooling … they can do more than ever with our solution because of the doubling the density and performance,” she said.
“Data is a big conversation we have with our customers regularly,” said Dean Gardner, field CTO, Softcat. “Hearing that Pure is creating a simplified portfolio does help us articulate their portfolio to our customers. We’re training our salespeople on data literacy so they can have that data conversation, to understand ultimately, what that sprawl is and how we can help do more with that data for our customers. So Pure announcing … the ability to choose capacity and performance with the new models is really interesting. [It’s] something that fits into our own strategy quite neatly.”
AIRI//S is the next generation of Pure Storage’s AI-ready infrastructure, developed alongside and Nvidia. The firm said that AIRI//S provides “a simple, on-demand infrastructure that accelerates AI initiatives at any scale.”
“It’s simple, easy to use, out of the box and … it’s a meet-in-the-channel play,” said Stusrud. “The sole requirement is that the partners both have a relationship with Pure and Nvidia in order to deliver this. Because it is a meet-in-the-channel play, our partners [are] going to wrap their own services around this. They’ll deliver their unique approach to these solutions.
“Because we’re 100% channel 100% of the time, this is a great opportunity for them to find unique opportunities, new workloads. Helping customers understand what they can do with their data. The machine learning, the AI ready infrastructure – customers are going to differentiate themselves based on what they do with that data.
“As customers try and deliver better outcomes for their customers, these are the solutions that will help them do that,” Stusrud added.
Gardner agrees the ability to extract value is what certain industries are looking for.
“Having this collaboration between the likes of Pure and Nvidia really makes it easy for us to articulate that,” he said. “It’s moving us further into that grid model of compute, which we think is going to be hugely important for most industries over the next few years. As they really start looking to delve in and do more with that information that they’ve got their disposal.”
Stusrud said Pure Storage will wrap the solutions into its rewards and incentive programs.
“It’s really important that we support the partner community with our rewards incentives. It sets us apart because when we think about delivering solutions; [it] is not only the flexibility for our partners but making sure it’s profitable for them. That they’re able to build their business delivering our solutions more than our competition,” she said.
“We want our partners to love selling Pure. We want them to be profitable when they sell Pure and it allows them to be thought leaders for their customers. We want to make sure that they think about Pure first.”
Stusrud said Pure Storage will wrap the solutions into its rewards and incentive programs.
“It’s really important that we support the partner community with our rewards incentives. It sets us apart because when we think about delivering solutions; [it] is not only the flexibility for our partners but making sure it’s profitable for them. That they’re able to build their business delivering our solutions more than our competition,” she said.
“We want our partners to love selling Pure. We want them to be profitable when they sell Pure and it allows them to be thought leaders for their customers. We want to make sure that they think about Pure first.”
PURE STORAGE PURE//ACCELERATE TECHFEST22 — Pure Storage has kicked off its annual event, Pure//Accelerate techfest22, in Los Angeles, with a host of new product announcements.
New products include the FlashBlade//S, the latest version from the FlashBlade family, and AIRI//, the next generation of Pure Storage’s AI-ready infrastructure. There’s also a new subscription-based launch with Evergreen//Flex, and the re-branding of some existing Evergreen offerings.
Pure Storage’s Wendy Stusrud
Here, Pure Storage VP, global partner sales, Wendy Stusrud, talks through what the news means for partners. We also get at channel partner Softcat’s take on the new offerings.
See the slideshow above for what’s new.
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