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Many of us will be traveling to Cisco Live in Las Vegas the first week of June, followed by Pure Storage’s own Pure//Accelerate®, also in Vegas, June 14-16. At both shows, we’ll be featuring solutions empowered by our new Cisco UCS X-Series-based FlashStack® from Pure Storage and Cisco Systems.  

An inherent architectural advantage of FlashStack’s software-defined, AI-based infrastructure is that users can support their entire portfolio from a single intelligent interface. FlashStack deployments commonly run a variety of workloads such as open DBs for DevOps, SAP on HANA for business operations, and Portworx® for their container management, all on a single platform without sacrificing performance. In fact, our latest FlashArray//XL supports application consolidation with up to 5.5PB of capacity and 70% faster performance than even our FlashArray//X models!

Analysts Report New C-suite Priorities

This is also the time of year when many industry analysts roll out their annual guidance on which IT investments C-suite decision makers will prioritize for the coming 12 months. Last year, we saw lingering spending still associated with Covid responses, for example, more VDI to support larger remote workforces. This year, however, as workers head back to the office, C-suite purchasing is impacted more by macroeconomic challenges, climate concerns, and global conflict than the need for pandemic-driven investment.

Most analysts agree the C-suite’s top IT purchase criteria has pivoted quickly. Analysts’ surveys universally reflect new directions in IT spending, especially around sustainability, cybersecurity, and subscription services. 

Enterprise Strategy Group¹ 

  • Sustainability: “93% of IT decision makers expect technology suppliers’ ESG programs to have a greater impact on their organization’s future purchase decisions.”
  • Security: “54% of respondents cited strengthening cybersecurity and/or improving operational resiliency against cyberattacks as a business issue driving technology spending.” 

IDC Futurescape Predictions² 

  • Subscriptions: “By 2024, digital-first enterprises will enable empathetic customer experiences and resilient operating models by shifting 70% of all tech and services spending to as-a-service and outcomes-centric models.”
  • Sustainability: “By 2025, 60% of G2000 will have digital sustainability teams, tasked with assessing, certifying, and coordinating use of business and IT sustainability data and analytic platforms offered by ICT providers.”

The Register³  

  • Security: The top imperative right now is security, named as a key driver [of IT procurement] by 45.7% of respondents.”

Gartner⁴

  • Subscriptions: The IT services segment will continue its growth trajectory through 2024, largely driven by the infrastructure-as-a-service market, which is projected to reach over 30% growth this year.”

These C-suite focus areas represent maturing in the industry. IT now has an undeniable seat at the table, and technology purchases must be closer aligned with business strategy than ever before.

FlashStack Redesign

In this light, it’s especially exciting to showcase FlashStack innovation at Cisco Live and Pure//Accelerate. The new FlashStack was designed to specifically address these latest IT requirements: sustainability, security, subscriptions, and simplification.

  • Sustainability: FlashStack reduces data center energy consumption at levels competitors with older, legacy solutions simply cannot. Both the Pure Storage and Cisco UCS compute layers have been completely redesigned for greater density and reduced power and cooling demands, saving customers millions of dollars on energy consumption and reduced data center footprints. 
  • Security: Dubbed Defense in Depth,” FlashStack supports a layered security strategy protecting your valuable data at every point across your infrastructure. Along with SafeMode™ snapshots and our ecosystem of top data protection and backup and recovery partners, we’re leveraging Cisco’s world-renowned cybersecurity suite to further strengthen our data security solutions. We want to help you address vulnerabilities before hackers breach your firewall. 
  • Subscriptions: What organization doesn’t dream of eliminating excess ITOps overhead and technical debt, reducing costs, and freeing IT resources for innovation? FlashStack helps with a range of flexible consumption alternatives, from Evergreen® Storage solutions to FlashStack as-a-Service. Each is designed to reduce your risks and better align IT spend to usage.
  • Simplification: The new FlashStack uncomplicates hybrid cloud infrastructure with a top-to-bottom, software-defined architecture that’s discretely provisioned and holistically managed by Intersight, Cisco’s cloud-native, AI-based management solution. FlashStack’s redesign was purpose-driven to address the complexities inherent in modern data center and hybrid cloud landscapes with improved scalability, performance, observability, and automation. 

The Post-Covid “New Normal”

The industry is finally coming out of our Covid-based tactical IT focus and getting back to “normal” business planning and execution. But with tough new ESG compliance requirements, more sophisticated cyberattacks, a potential looming global recession, and IT architectures that are getting more complex instead of less, this new normal remains as challenging as ever.

At Pure Storage and Cisco, we designed the new FlashStack with exactly these challenges in mind. FlashStack is faster than ever, far more secure, consumes 80% less electricity, and makes managing far-flung hybrid cloud infrastructure as simple as managing a desktop! I know this sounds like a tall order, but I remind readers Pure enjoys an industry-record Net Promoter Score of 81.4, indicating our customers agree we deliver on our promises. And IDC found on average, FlashStack users enjoyed a 72% reduction in total cost of operations. In addition, Gartner has placed Pure in the upper right of the Magic Quadrant™ for nine consecutive years!⁷  

If you’d like to learn more about how FlashStack meets the latest demands on your IT budget and resources, helps paint your data center green with both energy and budget savings, and provides the ability to protect your data with reactive and proactive security solutions, visit us June 4-8 at booth #5312 at Cisco Live, and join us for Pure//Accelerate, June 14-16.

¹https://www.esg-global.com/research/esg-research-the-role-of-esg-programs-in-it-decision-making
²https://www.esg-global.com/research/esg-research-the-role-of-esg-programs-in-it-decision-making
³https://situationpublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Technology-Procurement-Insights-from-The-Register.pdf
⁴https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-04-06-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-it-spending-to-grow-5-percent-in-2023
Audited NPS customer score as of December 2022
⁶https://www.purestorage.com/content/dam/flashstack/pdf/whitepaper/wp-flashstack-delivers-business-value.pdf
⁷https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2BEI3Y2D&ct=221014&st=sb