Gartner issued a research report titled “There Has Never Been a Better Time to Buy a Storage Array.”—and what was the central point?
That innovators like Pure Storage® are transforming the economics of storage acquisition and ownership, and customers everywhere stand to gain – dramatically. How? Through more competitive pricing to be sure, but also with next-generation ownership experiences, such as Pure’s unique Evergreen™ Storage model, that bring a cloud-like model to on-premises storage.
Simply put, this is a buyer’s market. Non-incumbents like Pure with purpose-built, next-generation all-flash storage solutions are giving customers a really attractive alternative to incumbent retro-fit solutions. And that puts incumbents on the defensive, forced to reduce pricing. The result is a no-lose situation from the customer perspective. You’ll either get a much better deal than you were expecting on a retrofit all-flash array from a vendor you know, or you’ll get a purpose-built all-flash array from an innovation leader, but with a radically better experience, and likely at a similar acquisition price point.
The report suggests:
“Invite three or more vendors to bid for their business to obtain the best possible pricing, with at least two of bids coming from non-incumbent vendors.”
We couldn’t agree more. We feel the differences between the old and the new are truly striking and translate into tremendous value that is worth exploring.
More Data + Less Storage = Savings for You
The Technology Is the Difference
To help illustrate the difference between the “easy, cloud-like” nature of the Pure Evergreen Storage model as compared to other approaches (all-flash or not), it is worth looking at an analogy most of us are familiar with: Owning our smartphone.
We could use pretty much any consumer tech gadget here but I think our smartphones have become pretty indispensable to many of us. You might even say “business critical” – just like your storage.
First up – your typical smartphone example.
After a few years of using your phone, you want (or need) the next generation. You take time out of your busy day to head to the phone store, and you’re talking away on your phone, maybe even browsing the web at the same time, and then – you have to hang up and hand over your phone.
In storage terms, what just happened was downtime and a maintenance window. (This is often painful to accommodate, let alone schedule in our busy lives – just like the data center). The employee helps migrate data and settings to a new phone. Some of your data is cloud synced in the background, which certainly helps. But, you just went through a data migration – and sometimes things don’t transfer properly. Of course, you also need to purchase that new phone and you’ll pay full price for it, regardless whether that price is paid up front (CAPEX) or smoothed out over time (OPEX, subscription or lease).
Again, in storage terms, you just went through a “forklift upgrade” with your phone, and you’ll have to suffer through it with each upgrade cycle.
Now, let’s look at how the Evergreen Storage model changes things.
Once again, after a few years, you’re ready for your next-gen smartphone. You’re in the middle of a critically important phone call in the middle of a busy workday, when all of a sudden, your phone morphs in front of your eyes. But it’s not painful this time—it’s better.
The screen gets larger and higher resolution. The camera adds megapixels. The CPU gets faster and consumes less power. And the battery lasts longer. A near-field compute (NFC) radio is added for wireless payments and other uses. Your phone is now fully next-generation, and the whole time you are still talking and working away, non-stop.
Your phone just modernized without any disruption let alone a painful trip to the phone store. And to top it off, you also only paid for the incremental additions to your phone. In other words, you didn’t need to rebuy all of the perfectly good screen, CPU transistors etc. you already had. It’s your phone, only better. And it just keeps getting better as the phone industry innovates.
Evergreen in Storage That Works—And Keeps Getting Better.
This is the effortless, cloud-like experience we have been delivering for years at Pure Storage. This experience is fundamentally possible because of a unique technology architecture that is purpose-built to stay modern, non-disruptively, even across generations.
Pure Storage customers have already crossed generations multiple times, and their data keeps on sailing.
Evergreen Storage is here, and we think the experience will completely reset your expectations for technology of any type, whether in your data center or in your pocket.
