Pure Storage Opens Office in Singapore Headed by Cortez Smith

Pure Storage, Inc. announced the opening of the Singapore office and the appointment of S&I Systems Pte Ltd (S&I) as its local distributor for the entire FlashArray product line and authorized provider of pre-and-post sale customer support.

This announcement follows the appointment of Cortez Smith as country manager for Singapore and ASEAN.

“With emerging markets poised to supplant the developed world as the main producer of the world’s data by 2020, ASEAN and the wider Asia region present huge growth opportunities for enterprise flash storage adoption,” said Cortez. “Backed by its strong geographic and economic advantages as well as long-term, forward-looking government policies such as the Intelligent Nation 2015 masterplan, Singapore plays an important role in our expansion within ASEAN. We also recognize that success in this region requires the right partners. With its focus on delivering strategic business and IT convergence and regional alliances, S&I brings complementary strengths to our partnership which we hope to expand and grow alongside customer needs.”

Established in 1998 and headquartered in Singapore, S&I’s team of employees in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand provide IT-consulting, business solutions, including storage and database applications, to over five hundred enterprise customers spanning a spectrum of industries across AsiaPac.

“Flash memory is gaining recognition as an enterprise storage media that delivers significant business advantages that can enable companies to outperform competitors and boost efficiency and security amidst the big data boom,” said Eric Sng, CEO, S&I. “We are delighted to be working with Pure Storage and believe that this partnership will expand our technology offerings and improve our ability to meet emerging enterprise needs.”

In Singapore and ASEAN, Pure Storage announced the appointment of Country Manager Cortez Smith, who has spent almost two decades in the IT industry, with the last ten specifically focused on storage infrastructure. Pure Storage has attracted some of the industry’s most recognized talent to its ranks, announcing in September storage industry figure Vaughn Stewart had joined the company. He is a technology leader known for his technical contributions to the virtualization community worldwide.

In August this year, Pure Storage announced a $150 million funding round with top tier public market investors, marking the single largest private financing event in the history of the storage industry. This brought the company’s total investment to $245 million.