4 Data Storage Innovations That Help Our Customers Succeed

After being named A Leader for the 10th year in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Primary Storage, as well as A Leader for the third year in the 2023 Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed File Systems & Object Storage, we thought it was important to reflect on this recognition. What does it mean to us—and more importantly, what does it mean for our customers who desire data storage innovation?

Where we landed was that being recognized as A Leader by Gartner reflects our deep commitment to innovation. So, why is Pure Storage so driven to stay ahead of the curve? 

The Short Answer: Our Customers

Our north star is taking the pain and hassle out of data storage, continuously innovating to tackle both the current and future needs of our customers. In today’s rapidly evolving, data-driven world, this means creating the optimal storage platform that combines the very best hardware, software, and services to provide an intuitive experience that moves our customers’ success forward. 

A case in point for customer success is Justin Brasfield, Infrastructure Manager at Netspend. Justin first leveraged Pure Storage at a previous organization to tackle a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) issue. After running it through its paces and doing due diligence, his team realized that Pure Storage could tackle many more of their workloads. This led him to use it for all their databases, as well as virtualized platforms and many other systems. Because of Pure Storage’s focus on innovation, he was able to consolidate outdated storage systems and deliver a more intuitive, agile storage experience to the organization.

So when Justin joined Netspend, he wanted to do the same thing. He faced an aging, complex storage infrastructure that was making it hard for his IT team to meet SLAs. Within three years, the financial services company was able to move from 19 legacy storage arrays to just 5 Pure Storage arrays.This move simplified nearly everything possible for his team, including hardware and software upgrades, expansion,, and more. He found that his partnership with Pure Storage delivered peace of mind, and provided him and his team much-needed time to focus on more value-add activities, like automation.  

Enterprise Storage Innovations Enterprises Need to Succeed

Netspend’s journey is a great example of how many organizations are finding it increasingly challenging to manage the explosive growth of enterprise data and the need to modernize storage infrastructure. To help guide them, Gartner has identified several enterprise storage trends in its Magic Quadrant reports that infrastructure and operations leaders should consider to keep up with rapidly evolving business demands. 

Trend 1: Advances in All-flash Technology

All-flash technology is dramatically expanding what companies can do with their data. According to Gartner, enterprises will use quad-level cell (QLC) technology in 25% of their SSD flash media. This is a dramatic uptick from 5% in 2022 which makes sense since the adoption of flash media is a step forward in eliminating disk and its limitations in the data center.

But, not all flash is created equal. Some solutions on the market use SSDs where flash is just masquerading as traditional spinning disk. In contrast, Pure Storage has built a platform with hardware, software, and services, all based on managing flash directly. This delivers a consistent experience for all data storage needs. The outcome is that our DirectFlash® technology enables the highest level of performance, resiliency, and energy efficiency in the entire storage market. 

For Netspend’s Justin Brasfield, as well as many other Pure Storage customers, this level of flash innovation has delivered impressive performance gains. The density gains are also compelling, resulting in lower total cost of ownership (TCO) via reduced space, power and cooling costs. This innovation has also made real the ability to extend the benefits of Pure Storage flash to traditional hard disk-oriented secondary workloads.

Trend 2: Cloud-like Operating Models

Gartner has also called out the cloud operating model as a trend that delivers the benefits of the cloud and brings them to the on-premises data center. Two important parts of a cloud operating model  defining cloud processes around business objectives rather than individual technologies, and the ability to leverage more flexible, as-a-Service consumption models  (more on this below). 

Thanks to Pure Storage innovation, the advantages of a cloud operating model only begin with the ability to optimize your storage spend. The intuitive experience of public cloud storage can extend throughout your hybrid cloud, from the ease of management of a single control plane, rapid provisioning, and the flexibility to take advantage of containers and microservices. Simply put, a carefully planned-out cloud operating model like Pure Storage delivers to its customers can make an organization measurably more efficient, agile, resilient, and outcome-focused. 

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Trend 3: Storage-as-Service

The storage as-a-service (STaaS) model is gaining ground because, well, it’s a financial model that makes dollars and sense.It allows organizations to acquire data storage with minimal upfront investment and match spend with actual usage. 

Pure Storage has been an innovator in STaaS for years, not just in the financial benefits it delivers to our customers, but also in our focus on ease of use. This approach is unique in the industry. We’ve tried to replicate the experience and simplicity of the public cloud on premises, tailoring storage to specific organizational needs with service level agreements. Pure Storage then goes even further by paying customers for rack space and power consumption for their on-premises STaaS. This is about doing right by our customers with a soup-to-nuts offering that truly simplifies the storage experience. 

Trend 4: Reducing Complexity and Value-added Services

At Pure Storage, we have always been driven by a mission to create all-flash storage that simplifies everything about the storage experience. We know that infrastructure is complex and that the data needs of every organization are diverse and growing. We also know that IT and infrastructure teams’ SLAs are becoming increasingly demanding. This has led us to create a storage platform that is the most consistent one in the industry, able to manage all use cases and data types. A platform that reduces complexity, simplifies storage management, and increases IT agility across the enterprise. We believe this is reflected in the fact that Gartner has recognized Pure Storage as A Leader in the Magic Quadrant and specifically called out the ease of use within our system.

Go Beyond the Quadrant

Dive deeper into our commitment to customer success by watching our on-demand webinar “Beyond the Quadrant: How Agile Storage Enables Enterprise Growth.” In this webinar, we provide a quick overview of the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ and then dig into how you can accelerate your modernization with the right data storage platform. You’ll get details on the optimal storage platform to support your technologies and will hear some valuable, real-world insights from Netspend’s Justin Brasfield.

Watch the webinar now