Pure Storage has made a pair of announcements designed to publicly reaffirm the strength of their relationship with Cisco. The first is the announcement of a new FlashStack powered by FlashBlade solution, that is purpose-built for Oracle Data Warehouse, and is an integrated infrastructure solution validated by Cisco. The second is the re-emphasis of the availability of the AIRI [AI Ready Infrastructure] and AIRI Mini, jointly engineered by Pure Storage and NVIDIA with Cisco Nexus ethernet switches

“These two announcements highlight our continued momentum with Cisco as strategic partners,” said Michael Sotnick, VP Partners, Services & Business Development, Pure Storage. “These announcements are key for us because they showcase momentum across our technology integrations.”

FlashStack is a converged infrastructure collaboration between Cisco and Pure that was first unveiled in 2014, and which has seen Oracle-centric Cisco Validated Designs released before, for Oracle 12c and RAC. This solution leverages Pure’s FlashBlade solution for high-performance unstructured workloads in a purpose-built and Cisco Validated design for Oracle Data Warehouse.

“This solution using FlashBlade and FlashStack provides a way for Oracle Data Warehouse customers to get the application performance of a more modern infrastructure, and allow the customer to chart a course to new workloads,” Sotnick said. “Moving off this kind of legacy application for any business is not for the faint of heart. There’s no light switch to move from a legacy application stack to a modern one, and move from  batch analytics which may take 6-8 hours overnight to real time streaming analytics. Our technology changes the way in which workloads are processed, managed and delivered to the business, and provides a more modern workload-centric approach in line with what today’s businesses are looking to achieve.”

Oracle, rather than another warehousing vendor like Teradata or IBM, was chosen for this because Cisco had prepared a Validated Design for Oracle Data Warehouse.

“The Cisco Validated Designs are a reflection of what they get requests for, and they have had a lot of customers getting requests to modernize Oracle Data Warehousing for them,” Sotnick said. “They are able to do so with architecture from Pure.” FlashStack for FlashBlade is ready for extension into modern analytics and AI when the customer is ready to do so.

FlashStack for FlashBlade is available now through all FlashStack certified reseller partners. However, Pure Storage is presently engaged in an extremely significant restructuring of their partner program, with the specifics being announced on August 1. Those changes are based on the expectation that all partners will show greater commitment to Pure, rather than treat them as an item on a line card, and admission to the new Elite Tier will not be defined principally by revenue, but by commitment to Pure, including certifications, training and a practice built out around Pure.

“With a Pure practice, partners can embrace those Cisco Validated Designs, and build solutions around them,” Sotnick said. “Some have also taken the extra step to be FlashStack support partners, who can take first-call support.”

The AIRI component of the announcement, that AIRI, and the new AIRI Mini will work with the Cisco Nexus 9000 product family, is a reaffirmation of what Pure announced at their Accelerate event in May, when AIRI Mini was unveiled. Sotnick said that Pure isn’t simply recycling old news here, however.

“This is a reconfirmation of what we announced in May, but here we are also linking it to the Oracle FlashBlade announcement,” Sotnick said. FlashBlade makes up Pure Storage’s hardware contribution to AIRI, along with the NVIDIA DGX-1 servers. “The link with Oracle is an opportunity to showcase the Cisco Validated Designs.”

On a different momentum note, Sotnick also said that Pure is showing great momentum in the Canadian market.

“The momentum we have in Canada is fantastic,” he said. “We are seeing great adoption of Pure technology in both the business and government sectors. We are hiring in Canada and growing our footprint there.”

Sotnick highlighted the importance of Pure’s top partners in Canada.

“We are seeing great growth with Softchoice, and they continue to be a key ally for us in the market,” he said. “OnX has also brought us into some very interesting opportunities. Most recently, we had a national launch with CDW Canada. Canada was the last piece of that CDW launch and we are seeing an appetite for it.”