Over the last several years, the benchmark of what defines a great tech company has changed. Of course, having the latest—and even next-generation—technology is still important. But to stand apart from the crowd, great tech companies have to deliver more. They have to deliver a great experience that is built from an understanding of how customers use technology in unexpected ways and how customers engage with technology outside of their work lives.
The experience is what makes Pure different from other vendors. We’re obsessed with making our customers happy—both with our technology and from an experience perspective. This has led us to take a different approach to design offerings, considering not just the technology but the business models (Evergreen™program), payment models (Pure as-a-Service™), and mobile management/predictive service models (Pure1®) with which you engage.
You know that; I know that. We just didn’t put a name on it until 2019, when we introduced the concept of a Modern Data Experience™. It’s a strategy built around three core pillars:
- Technology innovation
- Cloud-Ready
- Best Experience
At Pure//Accelerate™ Digital, we’re cranking up the volume on the Modern Data Experience—particularly around the notion of experience. But first, let’s look at how each foundational pillar brings this experience to life.
Technology Innovation: A Data Services Experience
With the push to make disk obsolete, Pure is leading the charge and continuing to innovate. We have several efforts underway. In our Pure//Accelerate keynotes, we’ll cover the foundation we’re designing to deliver on-demand data services to power modern, containerized applications (much more than as-a-service consumption). We could give you a code name or pre-announce something, but that’s been done. Instead, the Breakthrough to Something New keynote will focus on our vision and guiding principles for the next evolution in storage innovation.
Cloud-Ready: A Unified Portfolio Experience
For years, Pure has focused on the idea that the cloud is an operating model and a destination. We demonstrated that you could have cloud economics anywhere and data portability everywhere. You could manage resources independent of location, well ahead of the competition. With Portworx®, we offer a simple, multicloud world using modern, cloud-native applications. Things are so busy that it feels like we’re doing a new release every month.
Today, we’re building on the release of Portworx 2.8 with a new set of portfolio integrations that make the cloud experience more seamless than ever, especially in a Pure hybrid cloud:
- Simple, Enterprise IT Operations Experience for Kubernetes: Our latest Portworx release goes well beyond the limited Container Storage Interface (CSI) “connector” to provide high-scale Kubernetes-native, dynamic volume provisioning and management of Pure arrays. The release also offers container-granular backup, disaster recovery, security, auto-scaling, and migration.
- Predictive Support Experience for Kubernetes Apps: Pure1® can now receive Kubernetes-cluster and volume-usage metrics from Portworx clusters, providing unified observability and end-to-end troubleshooting of Kubernetes applications. Over time, the Pure1 Meta® AI engine can use these metrics to detect anomalies and suggest a resolution before issues become outages.
- Container-Native Storage Experience for VMware Tanzu: The latest release delivers container-granular storage and data management, including backup, recovery, encryption, and migrations for Tanzu regardless of the storage backing a customer’s VMware environment.
- Container-Aware Data Protection: Portworx and FlashBlade® make backing up Kubernetes applications easy and restores faster than ever by tiering data to multiple clouds for long-term retention.
The Best Experience: A Modern Acquisition and Planning Experience
This is the area that, in my mind, has always set Pure apart from the competition. Other vendors are good at building new technology, but they expect customers to conform to their unique management style. They forget to consider that one of the biggest impediments—and risks—to innovation is having to learn yet another set of detailed IT practices.
Pure1 has always made management and predictive support simple, but now we’re taking things further. With this announcement, we take ideas that competitors are thinking about and promising to deliver in the years ahead and make them a reality—now.
- Self-Service Management and Digital Procurement: How we transact has changed. We all use digital marketplaces in our personal lives, so why not bring that experience to IT? With the latest release of Pure1 Digital Experience, we’ve reimagined our approach to buying. You can scroll through offerings, browse descriptions for data services and professional services, and then click to quote or acquire.
- Click to Quote and Acquire: When making a selection, you can easily define parameters, see pricing, and send that to Pure for a quote. For cloud-based offerings (Pure Cloud Block Store™ and Portworx), you can order them from the cloud marketplace and begin using them.
- Infrastructure Observation and Real-Time Alerting: Part of a larger data-protection analysis, prediction, and acquisition effort, this release of Pure1 allows us to monitor and inform you of what data is protected against ransomware attacks. Then, you can take action to make sure your data is safeguarded.
- AI-Driven Workload Forecasting and Planning: Adding new workloads doesn’t have to be hard. With this release, pick a workload from a pre-populated list or customize your own. Pure1 AI then determines the performance and capacity effect on a system so you can decide where the best fit is for ROI and user experience.
That’s a lot, particularly for Pure1. Across the board, these enhancements aim to improve your experience interacting with Pure technology—and with Pure as a vendor.
This last part is key. As Pure becomes a more intrinsic part of on-premises and cloud operations, we don’t want to lose our focus on you, the customer. That’s what grounds us, makes us unique, and ensures we’re delivering meaningful advancements.
Over the days and months ahead, keep an eye out for new innovations from Pure— advancements to align with the way you live. Technology acquisition, management, and implementation don’t have to be a burden. It’s as simple—or simpler—than any other thing in your life, making it easier for you to drive future innovative breakthroughs that truly impact your business.
For more, tune into Pure//Accelerate.
Build Your Pure Knowledge at Pure//PEAK Week 2021. Join us June 22 and 24 to develop your individual capabilities and knowledge to support success with Pure products.
