Pure and Cohesity have partnered around Pure FlashBlade before, but this is the first jointly engineered effort, and is backed by an integrated Go-to-Market strategy as well.
Today, Pure Storage and Cohesity are announcing an extension of their long-standing strategic relationship. Pure FlashRecover, Powered by Cohesity, combines Cohesity DataProtect software with Pure’s FlashBlade platform in a jointly engineered solution, which is much tighter than the previous collaborations by the two companies using these solutions.
“This is a huge step up in the level of our strategic partnership,” said Amy Fowler, VP, Strategy and Solutions, FlashBlade, at Pure Storage. “Pure and Cohesity have come together here at the request of a lot of customers. This is a substantial step forward because it is a jointly engineered solution. It’s not just Cohesity software on FlashBlade. It’s a fully integrated solution.”
“This takes the underlying goodness that was already there and takes it to the next level,” said Chris Wiborg, Cohesity’s VP of Product Marketing. “There’s a great alignment between the companies already. We are both disruptors and innovators in our respective markets. There is a lot of shared cultural values, and we are both in the top 1% of our respective NPS scores. We are also well-aligned segment-wise, and are proven in our large enterprise install base.”
The key point the two companies are emphasizing is the ability of FlashRecover to restore data more rapidly than other solutions, which they are emphasizing has always been the whole point of backup and recovery.
“It’s the recovery, stupid,” Wiborg said, making an analogous reference to the Clinton campaign’s 1992 mantra about the economy. “What customers want is to get a rapid restore. That’s become especially important in the context of a ransomware attack, where bringing back the whole environment at scale and speed in large enterprises is becoming a point of concern.”
“Cohesity brings instant restore capability, especially in VMware environments,” Fowler added. “Having the ability to restore quickly is a huge part of it. The enterprise market is where we think this will have the most relevance, with 200 TB plus of protected data being the best fit.”
The companies say the new offering will provide up to 3x faster backup and restore throughput than disk-based alternatives, as well as better performance than the earlier Pure-Cohesity collaborations which did not have this joint engineering. They also say that FlashRecover enables the recovery of thousands of virtual machines and up to 1 PB of data a day to meet enterprise requirements.
The integration that is present in the engineering also extends to the Go-to-Market strategy for FlashRecover, which is much more collaborative than the earlier joint initiatives.
“Before, we played nicely together and had integration, but now we have consciously moved to joint selling,” Fowler said. “The Go-to-Market is fully integrated, and includes joint selling and quota retirement, as well as a joint marketing program.” Cohesity DataProtect has also been added to Pure’s price list, which is why this new relationship is not technically an OEM one.
Pure’s channel actually does the selling, with support from Cohesity’s sales, although the differentiation between the two sets of partners is close to academic because they have many joint channel partners. Pure will provide the Level 1 and Level 2 customer support, and if needed, Cohesity will provide the Level 3.
Finally, Pure has now become a Cohesity Technology Partner. While Cohesity was in Pure’s Technology Partner program previously, this is the first time that Pure has joined the Cohesity program.
Pure FlashRecover, Powered by Cohesity is being tested by joint customers today. Fowler said that GA in the U.S. is scheduled for early October, with availability in other geos to follow in the coming quarters.
