When All Flash Array specialist Pure Storage (PSTG) announced strong Q1 2018 financial results this week, CEO Scott Dietzen and President David Hatfield were quick to credit channel partners -- including mutual partners that work with Cisco Systems. Moreover, the executives hinted that an MSP partner push is on the way.
For its fiscal Q1 2018, revenue was $182.6 million, up 31 percent vs. the corresponding quarter last year. Despite intense Flash competition from rivals like HP Enterprise (owner of Nimble Storage), Dell EMC and NetApp, the Pure executive team sounds confident in its business strategy.
That strategy involves three growth-oriented pillars: Platform selling, pipeline, and partnerships. On the platform selling front, Pure delivered more than 50% of its FlashBlade wins from existing FlashArray customers. On the pipeline front, Pure points to guidance of 34 percent year-on-year Q2 revenue growth.
Pure Storage: MSPs, Embedded and OEM Partner Push
Then, Hatfield touched on partnerships. "Pure's channel momentum continues with our partner's contributing more than 70 percent of net new logos in the quarter," he said. "In particular, we benefited from the increasing field engagement with Cisco and our shared partners. We are continuing to explore alternative routes to market with managed service providers, embedded solution providers and OEM, and we are deepening our relationship with the Big Three public cloud companies. More on this to come next month at Accelerate."
Accelerate 2017 is Pure's customer and partner conference, which is set for June.
Despite the strong Q1 results, Pure Storage realizes the enterprise IT market is quite competitive, CEO Scott Dietzen conceded. But even there, Cisco partners are assisting Pure's momentum, he added. "I would say the biggest material uplift we feel is from the partners," Dietzen told Wall Street analysts during the earnings call. "There is a very strong Cisco partner community that we are already plugged into. Concerns they have around Dell EMC competing with corresponding Cisco products, I think is bringing business in our direction."
Pure's fiscal Q1 2018 results seem to reinforce that point.