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Pure Storage CEO: New Channel Partner Programs Coming

Pure Storage CEO Charles Giancarlo
Pure Storage CEO Charles Giancarlo

Pure Storage will announce new channel partner program initiatives at the all flash array company's Accelerate 2018 conference on Tuesday in San Francisco, according to CEO Charles Giancarlo. Moreover, existing relationships with Cisco Systems and Nvidia continue to accelerate, he indicated during Pure Storage's fiscal Q1 2019 earnings call on Monday night.

Giancarlo, perhaps best known as Cisco's former CTO, joined Pure as CEO in August 2017. Since that time, the company has shifted to a business unit organization, rolled out new R&D and bolstered its partner programs, he says. Pure Storage will show examples of those moves on Tuesday.

Asked about Pure Storage's progress since Giancarlo joined the flash storage provider, he replied:

"We are going to be rolling out some new channel programs starting tomorrow at Accelerate, as well as some new product programs associated which I don't want to ruin the announcement, so I won't give it up, but some new product programs that will be going out tomorrow, all of which I think we've started since I've come on board. And I feel that from an organizational and communication structure across the company, we've become a bit simpler to navigate."

Pure Storage President David Hatfield

Moreover, Pure Storage's relationships with Nvidia and Cisco continue to demonstrate outstanding momentum, added President David Hatfield.

"Together, we believe that our FlashStack solution is the fastest growing converge infrastructure offering in the market," Hatfield said. "Activity with the Cisco sales teams and our joint partners continues to be robust and we were showcased at their annual partner connection conference last month. We demonstrated how FlashBlade enhances performance for Cisco and Nvidia deep learning neural networks as well as for oracle data warehousing."

Pure Storage: Big Growth, Some Product Margin Concerns

No doubt, Pure Storage is growing rapidly. Revenue for fiscal Q1 2019 was $255.9 million, up 40 percent year over year. The company signed up roughly 300 new customers in Q1, pushing the firm's installed base to more than 4,800 organizations.

Still, Wall Street has some concerns about the company's product margins. Pure Storage's stock feel nearly 10 percent during after-hours trading (as of 10:02 p.m. ET) as investors digested the financial news.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.