In addition to these new hyperconverged models produced with partners NVIDIA and Mellanox, Pure Storage announced FlashStack for AI, an AI-optimized version of their Cisco-focused converged offering.
Support for RDMA over Converged Ethernet is available now in Purity 5.2 software, while the ObjectEngine flash-to-flash-to-cloud data protection acquired from StorReduce will hit GA in the first half of the year.
The new services are designed to have mission-critical capability, and to give Pure Storage a unified hybrid architecture capability that counters competitor cloud-centric strategies. While these are optimized for AWS, services for the Azure cloud are planned for the future.
Enhancements in Rubrik’s latest release include certification for SAP HANA, instant recovery capabilities for Oracle database instant recovery and improved Microsoft Office 365 protection on the Rubrik Polaris SaaS platform.
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.
Pure Storage channel chief Michael Sotnick also highlighted strong company momentum in the Canadian market.
The changes to the Pure channel program and go-to-market motions are extremely significant, impacting most things except for Pure’s commitment to a 100 per cent channel strategy.
While multiple backup vendors have snapshot integrations around Pure’s FlashArray//M array, integrations for the AI-focused Pure FlashBlade are rarer.
The model that Pure Storage outlined as their path forward is not a net-new, as it is built on technology like last year’s FlashBlade//X and Gartner’s Shared Accelerated Storage category. It is, however, a differentiated strategy within the industry, that Pure believes will drive it to great heights.
While many customers are still on the fence about NVMe adoption in its early days, Pure Storage is making it easier for them to buy FlashArray//X now and upgrade later, by making the upgrade path simple, and changing pricing policies to encourage people to buy //X now.
AIRI Mini is a joint engineering initiative between Pure and NVIDIA that provides an AI-focused solution with much less compute capability than AIRI, announced in March. It thus has a much lower entry point, and the companies think it will lead to strong interactions between infrastructure teams and data scientists.
Veeam CEO Peter McKay credited Veeam’s expansion of their strategic relationships as critical to their success in 2017, and indicated they plan significant further expansion here going forward.
A jointly engineered ‘AI-in-a-Box,’ AIRI allows customers to cut simulation training time by 4x, in a much tinier footprint than it took before.
Brent Allen, Pure Storage’s Canadian country manager, was at the Pure//Live event and discussed the company’s progress in Canada with ChannelBuzz.
Scott Dietzen moves over to Chairman of the Board, with Charles Giancarlo replacing him as CEO of Pure.
Catalogic, which makes ‘in place’ copy data management software, had strong results at last week’s Pure Accelerate event.
In addition to a three tier program for service providers, Pure Storage is adjusting how its internal sales people are compensated to remove what service providers believed was a tendency to favor working with traditional partners over ones selling Pure as a service.
The new integration between Pure and Cohesity follows up an integration around Pure’s FlashArray//M earlier this year.
Partners and customers of both Veeam and Pure have been requesting the integration, although it won’t become generally available until the fourth quarter of 2017.
The enhancements, which include support for Oracle RMAN and SQL, as well as the Hyper-V and Nutanix Acropolis hypervisors, strengthen the Rubrik enterprise play.
