… And Adds Subsidiary in Tokyo, Japan

Pure Storage, Inc. announced the opening of multiple offices across the AsiaPac region, including a new subsidiary, Pure Storage Japan K.K.

Simultaneously it has inked a strategic partnership agreement with Tokyo Electron Device Limited (TED) to distribute its FlashArray throughout Japan.

 To oversee its operations in the region, Pure Storage named Michael Cornwell VP of AsiaPac. One of the first Pure Storage employees, Cornwell played an instrumental role in the definition and architecture of FlashArray. Since his appointment last quarter, he has established partnerships and team members in the region to drive the company’s APAC go-to-market strategy and deliver customer and partner support in multiple countries. Customers in AsiaPac now have access to local trained experts, 24-hour technical support, and on-site parts replacement at the same tier one level as its North American customers.

"The AsiaPac region represents an incredible opportunity for Pure Storage. This is a greenfield market where concerns about the space and power inefficiency of traditional disk storage are particularly acute," said Cornwell. "We plan to continue our APAC expansion throughout 2013. Next, we are turning our focus on the vibrant virtualization community in Australia, an application space that is ideally suited to benefit from the FlashArray."

Demand for all-flash storage is advancing in AsiaPac markets, as companies recognize the sea change opportunity it represents for performance sensitive applications and lowering total cost of storage ownership. With this expansion into APAC, distributors and resellers across the region can now capitalize on the $4B, high-growth enterprise flash storage market opportunity.

"IDC forecasts the Worldwide I/O intensive storage capacity market to grow at an 86% annual compound growth rate," said Dan Iacono, research director for SSD and tiering storage solutions at IDC. "Expanding Pure Storage’s existing global presence to AsiaPac and going to market with established partners like TED should enable Pure Storage to capitalize on the I/O intensive storage market’s tremendous growth and accelerate its global channel sales strategy."

Tokyo Electron Device Limited (TED) joins the company’s ecosystem of strategic reseller partners. The Pure Storage P3 Channel Partner Program is setting a standard across the channel community by enabling and investing in VARs and distributors who are committed to driving next generation storage solutions to their customers. TED is leveraging Pure Storage’s channel sales and marketing tools to accelerate demand, grow revenue and increase margins. With more than a decade of experience in bringing high-growth North American technology start-ups, such as Brocade, Data Domain, Isilon, and others to the Japanese market, TED offers the expertise and technical resources to support deployment of FlashArray in the region.

"Pure Storage has delivered the industry’s best all-flash storage array solution for enterprises looking to improve the performance, complexity and cost of their storage environments," said Keith Hayashi, corporate VP of TED. "With our proven expertise in bringing storage solutions to the Japanese market and our established network of customers, we are well-positioned to support Pure Storage in its efforts to speed adoption of FlashArray in Japan. This strategic partnership enables our companies to support our mutual customers and further validates TED’s position as Japan’s market leading distributor of storage technologies."

"There is strong global demand for all-flash storage, driven in part by BYOD/VDI and big data Analytics projects where legacy mechanical disk has become the performance bottleneck in their infrastructure. With the ease and seamless integration of FlashArray into our customer’s environments, they immediately remove the bottleneck, unlocking the business value of these critical IT Projects, while lowering the TCO in their data center," said David Hatfield, president at Pure Storage. "We are extremely enthusiastic about our market acceptance in the AsiaPac region and are honored to be partnering with TED, Japan’s leading enterprise technology reseller as we drive the global expansion of the Pure Storage FlashArray."