Veritas partners with Pure Storage on joint solution around Pure’s data hub architecture

The joint solution is targeted at larger customers, and will initially go to market through a select number of the two companies’ joint channel partners, before having its availability broadened out subsequently.

Veritas Technologies and Pure Storage have announced a new partnership through which Veritas’s enterprise NetBackup solution will be integrated with the Pure Storage data hub architecture. The partnership also has a go-to-market component. That has not been completely finalized, but the general contours are that it will initially be available to a limited number of key joint channel partners, before being subsequently broadened out.

“We are excited about our new strategic partnership with Pure Storage,” said Bradley Tipps, Director, Business Development and Technology Alliances at Veritas. “We are announcing two things. First is the new partnership itself. Second is a joint solution where our Veritas NetBackup will provide data protection for their FlashArray/FlashBlade portfolio around Pure Storage’s data hub architecture.”

Pure Storage’s FlashBlade is designed for unstructured data, particularly around artificial intelligence use cases. Their data hub architecture is built on FlashBlade, and centralizes data repositories to combine streaming analytics, backup, data lakes and artificial intelligence [AI] clusters  to allow AI and machine learning to be executed in larger and more diverse data sets, and provide customers with broader and deeper data analysis than before.

“Their data hub architecture addresses a common pain point in the industry,” Tipps said. “We have a similar view of the problem and the solution. Through this partnership, we provide holistic data protection which protects the entire data hub architecture, and also is able to leverage FlashBlade as a backup target for rapid restores.”  In addition, Veritas NetBackup, in conjunction with Veritas CloudPoint, has been integrated with Pure Storage FlashArray for integrated snapshot management through the NetBackup console.

This partnership with Pure Storage has a go-to-market component as well as the technical integration.

“We have a strong common customer base and common channel partners with Pure Storage, and this partnership also has a go-to-market aspect,” Tipps stated. “Customers will have the confidence that all the integrations will be seamless. Both Pure Storage and ourselves have a common view of how data architectures can be consolidated to give customers better insight into their data, so that they can make better decisions. The integration will assist partners to sell to these large enterprises that are adopting Pure for AI, machine learning and analytics.”

The initial plan is to target these larger enterprises though a focused element of joint channel partners, which will include partners like CDW and SHI.

“We are aligning around strong common channel partners that we initially plan on leveraging,” Tipps said. “It will initially go to market through these partners, and will then be broadened out. We are still working on the details of that phase of the route to market. Partners will have the freedom to create their own bundles around NetBackup, CloudPoint, FlashArray, FlashBlade, and their own differentiated services. No special certifications will be required to sell these.”

While this particular partnership will initially focus on this specific offering around the Pure data hub, Tipps said that the relationship is likely to expand going forward.

“The foundation of the relationship is data protection, but there is so much more we will do together,” he said. “Our portfolio is broader than data protection. It includes software-defined storage, and the ability to provide tiering and classification of data. We can leverage tiering, including tiering to the cloud.”