Pure Storage ramps up focus on as-a-service offerings

Pure Storage’s Accelerate event has been happening over the past couple of days, with the vendor using it as a moment to usher in a number of enhancements to its channel offerings.

The theme of the event quickly emerged around as-a-service products, with the firm keen to encourage partners and customers to adopt its subscription-based models.

Charles Giancarlo, CEO of Pure Storage, said that it had been clear for a while that as-a-service offerings were going to be the way to go, but this suspicion has only accelerated in the past year.

“The need for these innovations became clear several years ago, but the pressures of the pandemic have made them more obvious than ever. Business will increasingly be conducted online, and that means business services need to be scaled and available on demand,” he said.

“Pure is delivering the modern aspects of data management services. Pure as a Service provides transparent and uniform pricing on-premise and in the cloud, charging for only what is used,” he added.

The vendor has seen the number of resellers getting involved with the proposition double in the past year, and it is incentivising even more of its channel to get into the as-a-service offering. The firm is going to be giving Elite partners the chance to earn 5% of the total contract value on closed eligible as-a-service wins up to $100,000 per deal.

The company has expanded the functionality in its Pure1 portal to support as-a-service sales, with partners getting the chance to manage subscriptions on behalf of their customers. There will also be an opportunity for users to add extra services, which can then be delivered by their partner. 

“Two of Pure’s greatest strengths are our industry-leading subscription services and our  partner-led approach – both are foundational to our business and the way we serve our customers. We are thrilled to see our partners’ continued momentum with Pure as a Service, and are excited to deliver new opportunities for partners to make an impact through our unique and differentiated subscription offerings,” said Andy Martin, vice-president of global partner sales at Pure Storage.

The vendor is also handing partners the chance to sell Kubernetes solutions with Portworx, which was acquired late last year, moving to a 100% channel model.

“Pure and Portworx together are redefining what storage for modern, cloud-native applications looks like. By delivering storage that can be orchestrated entirely through Kubernetes, Pure is delivering a seamless hybrid cloud experience and changing outcomes for customers," said Murli Thirumale, vice-president and general manager of cloud native business unit at Pure Storage.

Giancarlo closed his keynote by indicating to partners that the firm’s plans were to make it easier to manage customer data going forward.

“We are thrilled to be bringing you the next step in modern data management solutions, which cross both on-premise and cloud, and traditional and cloud-native environments. We will show you a single integrated control plane for all data management, with the ability to dynamically adjust your data subscriptions,” he said.