As a leader in Public Sector, thanks to the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act, modernization is on the brain of every government CIO and IT manager. However, the need to drive efficiencies in the data center is certainly not limited to government. In fact, most IT data centers are still running a lot of legacy technologies, particularly when it comes to storage. While modernization can be daunting, increasing volumes of data are forcing organizations in all sectors to re-evaluate their options. Making progress can be easier and more cost effective than you think, thanks to innovations in both the underlying technology and the way storage is delivered. Here are five achievable New Year’s resolutions to reach your modernization goals in 2018:
Resolution #1: Push Back on Rising Maintenance Costs
For too long, IT departments have been challenged by rising maintenance costs, forklifting out equipment every 3-5 years, re-buying servers, network, and storage capacity already purchased, and undertaking risky data migrations. In today’s ever-evolving IT landscape, CIOs and IT managers can’t continue to be surprised with hidden and unpredictable maintenance charges that take up an enormous percentage of IT budgets. Because data is mission critical to any organization’s success, Pure Storage can help you break that cycle. Pure pioneered Flat & Fair maintenance and support pricing that is predictably flat (or better!) over the long term, while keeping your data in-place. By Flat, we mean that customers will never be charged higher out-year maintenance rates compared to their original maintenance and support contract. By Fair, we mean that they will also typically realize a reduction in per-TB maintenance rates over time given the generally downward trajectory of flash and other hardware component prices. Our maintenance and support is just part of our comprehensive Evergreen Subscription program.
Resolution #2: Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
Simple and effortless should be the name of the game, but IT environments have become increasingly complicated over time. While the need to add or upgrade server and network capacity usually has minimal impact on day-to-day operations, thanks to technologies such as vMotion, and Live Motion, legacy data storage has required volumes of IT manuals, employees who spend significant time migrating data, forklift upgrades that introduce risk, not to mention product confusion as storage vendors have consolidated. Pure Storage has re-defined simplicity in the datacenter. By eliminating the need for data migrations and providing non-disruptive upgrades, Pure Storage lets your IT team focus on more important tasks. Our ActiveCluster multi-site clustering comes as a no cost upgrade within our Evergreen™ Subscription. It requires only one new command, four steps, and no third site to set up the highest level of reliability that extends our already industry leading 99.9999% uptime.
Resolution #3: Never Again Pay for Storage You Already Own
You buy it once, you own it. Sounds obvious. But it doesn’t always apply to data storage. Rebuying the same storage capacity every 3-5, which is what the storage industry has somehow normalized, is simply wasteful. Today, protecting your data is like health insurance – every year or every time you change your insurance, your deductible starts over again. To break away from this norm, Pure pioneered “Forever Flash.” Part of Forever Flash is Forever Maintenance, which replaces hardware as-needed with like or better parts, as long as you are active on maintenance and support. Whether SSDs, cables, shelves, etc., you are covered. What does this mean? Simply put, Forever Maintenance means customers never have to repurchase their existing capacity to keep their storage productive. And with Pure1® CloudAssist monitoring our customers’ storage 24×7, we can usually predict problems before they become serious, and remedy them ahead of time. In these cases we will proactively work with customers to provide replacement of parts as necessary. Forever Maintenance represents the ultimate in peace of mind and is yet another great reason to love your storage.
Resolution #4: Stop Buying Decades Old Legacy Technology
Modernization should offer more than just retrofitting old technology and calling it new. Putting flash in a decades old architecture does not make it modern. Pure offers a data platform which enables organizations to consolidate everything – whether databases, virtual machines or analytics. Pure believes that, fundamentally, a modern data center must be able to continue to innovate with minimal or no impact to data protection or performance. Pure delivers Tier 1 data services to all workloads with 2.5x efficiency without any performance impact (compression, data reduction, and thin provisioning yield a typical 2.5X improvement on average compared to competitors’ efficiency guarantees). Our latest update, ActiveCluster, provides the ability to do multi-site replication and is included with the latest version of our Purity FlashArray operating system (5.0). ActiveCluster maintains Pure’s ethos of simplicity and requires only one new command, and 4 simple steps to set up. In a significant differentiation from traditional clustering solutions, ActiveCluster does not require the customer to have their own 3rd site, which yields significant CAPEX and OPEX savings. For our existing customers who are current on their maintenance agreements, ActiveCluster is a simple, no cost, non-disruptive, data in-place upgrade. That’s innovation made simple!
Resolution #5: Love Your Storage
Sounds almost ridiculous, doesn’t it? Who loves their storage? With storage that modernizes itself, it’s actually possible. Pure Storage is in the top 1% for customer satisfaction across all B2B tech, with an audited Net Promoter (NPS) score of 83.7 (Satmetrix 2016 NPS Global B2B Benchmarks). Pure Storage is the also the only vendor in the industry with a formalized, 30-day money-back guarantee on new system purchases, which Pure calls Love Your Storage. With Love your Storage, organizations will be able to realize the full potential of their data, without the worry of unnecessary upkeep, unexpected expenses, and constant data migration. What’s not to love?
In 2018, resolve to push back on rising maintenance costs, simplify, stop paying for storage you already own, stop buying legacy technology, and love your storage. These five resolutions are simple, actionable, and can help kick start your modernization efforts in 2018. For more #StorageResolutions, check out our infographic. To see what IDC thinks of Evergreen storage, download Evergreen Storage is Changing Customer Expectations.
