PURE//ACCELERATE 2025, Las Vegas – For channel partners, the big news at the annual Pure Storage customer and partner conference this year was the introductions of faster, more powerful Pure flash storage arrays for businesses and the announcement of its new Enterprise Data Cloud to help enterprises integrate all their data.Two U.S.-based Pure partners spoke with ChannelE2E at the conference, saying that the latest Pure offerings will give them valuable new tools they can use to help customers boost their storage infrastructures. Both partners asked that their names and the names of their companies be withheld."The Enterprise Data Cloud will be impactful for customers that have a large fleet of storage arrays, especially if they are [distributed] around the globe,” said the IT manager for an East Coast-based VAR that is a longtime Pure partner."I think the workflows that are written into it will make a big difference,” she said. "Everyone is looking, particularly folks who have a larger distributed environment, for ways to reduce operations in general, and so I think this will absolutely help them.”At the same time, more and more customers are asking for help to move their VMware deployments and workloads to another platform to escape systemic pricing and operational changes wrought since its acquisition by Broadcom, she said.Calling VMware migrations "the hot topic, everywhere, all the time,” she said Pure is also providing help for that task to make things easier for customers. "There are a couple of ways that they can help, but one in particular that has been gaining a little bit of traction is moving to containers. Pure has software for work associated with container mobility and storage management."Also intriguing for her customers is Meta’s ongoing use of Pure DirectFlash Modules (DFMs) in Meta’s data centers for dramatic performance gains. The DFMs allow all-flash arrays to communicate directly with raw flash storage, according to Pure.“I am curious about how DFMs are being used by Meta,” she said. “It is a way of getting really dense storage. I want to see how Pure is going to incorporate that into other things, particularly if they can get something into their Pure systems.”What would be beneficial for customers, she said, is if Pure can use these dense DFMs to create archive arrays that would allow them to provide additional tiers of storage for users.“Right now, Pure storage arrays are great and fast—they are good at Tier 1,” she said. “They have a medium-level Tier 2 [capability]. It is really Tier 3 where I feel like they do not have something that is archived. So, I want to see if they can exploit the density they are getting with these DFMs that they are designing essentially for Meta. There is a need for a Pure product that is high capacity but does not need to have high performance.”
“The Fusion piece they have been working on over the last three to five years,” he said. “Right now, it is to the point where it is really helpful when you can cluster the arrays and do different things like that. It is absolutely going to be an improvement, and our customers are waiting for this.”The benefit for customers with Fusion is that they can use it to make changes to multiple storage arrays in multiple locations while setting or changing policies and security needs using automation, he said.“This is the automated thing that is going to do it all for you,” he said. “You set a policy on the software level, and it pushes it down to the arrays, and you are done. So even the smaller companies can take advantage of it. Whenever you have pieces like automated distribution, it just helps.”These well-thought-out features have always been among the benefits for customers who are using Pure for storage, he said. “Pure has always been touted as easy to use, and you do not have to do a whole lot of work,” he said. “I think Pure has been the leader for probably the last 10 years, and the new innovations put them that much more ahead.”
Pure Fusion Continues Its Maturity for Customers, Says Another VAR
Another partner, a Southeast-based VAR, said his customers will be interested in Pure’s still-evolving Pure Fusion offering, which is used to unify and automate global storage in a single, intelligent control plane for enterprises.“The Fusion piece they have been working on over the last three to five years,” he said. “Right now, it is to the point where it is really helpful when you can cluster the arrays and do different things like that. It is absolutely going to be an improvement, and our customers are waiting for this.”The benefit for customers with Fusion is that they can use it to make changes to multiple storage arrays in multiple locations while setting or changing policies and security needs using automation, he said.“This is the automated thing that is going to do it all for you,” he said. “You set a policy on the software level, and it pushes it down to the arrays, and you are done. So even the smaller companies can take advantage of it. Whenever you have pieces like automated distribution, it just helps.”These well-thought-out features have always been among the benefits for customers who are using Pure for storage, he said. “Pure has always been touted as easy to use, and you do not have to do a whole lot of work,” he said. “I think Pure has been the leader for probably the last 10 years, and the new innovations put them that much more ahead.”
