Pure Storage With Forever Flash

Pure Storage, Inc., an all-flash enterprise storage array company, announced Forever Flash, a business model that changes the way customers purchase and maintain enterprise storage.

The model is designed to reduce storage ownership costs over the deployment lifecycle and offer a continual in-place equipment upgrade plan that eliminates storage downtime and the need for traditional costly and risky ‘forklift upgrades.’

“Our research consistently tells us that maintaining traditional storage infrastructure is a major pain point for IT managers, resulting in additional cost and sometimes risk for the business,” said Simon Robinson, VP, storage at 451 Research. “Pure Storage has designed the long-term maintenance of its arrays into the product, offering a fresh-and long overdue-alternative to the traditional storage sales model. We believe this approach will be well-received by customers and look forward to seeing how the rest of the industry responds.”

Until now, Pure Storage sold its flash arrays and maintenance and service contracts (M&S) in nearly the same way as most storage vendors. As of today, Pure Storage is innovating an approach designed to reduce both lifetime cost and complexity for customers. Once customers make an initial equipment purchase, they can optimize their storage ownership lifecycle and M&S contracts according to their needs.

The model has two dimensions:

• Fresh Every Upgrade enables customers who are expanding their storage arrays (either by adding capacity or upgrading controllers) to reset their maintenance on the entire array to the then-current first-year rates, typically enabling customers to experience a reduction in the cost/TB of maintenance over time.
• Free Every Three enables storage buyers to receive a controller upgrade every three years when they renew their maintenance agreements in years four or seven (an additional two years of maintenance must be purchased at this time to qualify for the controller upgrade).

The program also allows customers to pre-buy five years of maintenance, receiving a controller refresh on year three. Combined with Pure’s non-disruptive controller upgrades, Forever Flash keeps enterprise applications running on the latest hardware with no downtime.

To illustrate the benefits of Forever Flash, consider this scenario: assume an enterprise storage purchase occurs with an equipment cost of $500,000. The common industry practice is to charge an 8-15% plus per-year maintenance fee that steps up over a three- or five-year period. As the array ages the maintenance rates rise, and the customer must choose to either pay ever-increasing maintenance rates, or buy a whole new array, and undergo a complex forklift upgrade to a next generation product, which can take weeks to plan and execute. By contrast, with Pure Storage Forever Flash, a customer could re-base their maintenance and support fees to Year One maintenance rates every time they upgrade their controllers or expand capacity. If that customer would rather keep equipment expenditures down, they could instead opt to have their controllers upgraded every three years with the option. There is no painful equipment upgrade cycle at the end, because the all-flash array controllers can be upgraded non-disruptively and expansion shelves can be added without interrupting availability.

“Pure Storage is transforming the way we manage our storage investments by offering options to extend the life of our systems while simplifying and reducing the costs of maintenance and support,” said David Abbott, manager, IT infrastructure engineering, TripPak SERVICES & ACS Advertising, A Xerox company. “We are already taking advantage of improved lifecycle management through the non-disruptive upgrades provided by Pure’s FlashArray and we look forward to taking advantage of Forever Flash.”

“The industry shift from HDD to flash will drive down storage costs to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen,” remarked Scott Dietzen, CEO, Pure Storage. “Part of the reduction will come in more efficient equipment, and the other part will come from innovative vendors who put an end to archaic industry practices including out-of-control maintenance contracts and the need to forklift-upgrade equipment every three to five years.”

Forever Flash is a program available through most Pure Storage partners, but participation may vary. It creates opportunity for the channel by driving demand generation, strengthening account ownership and increasing chances of greater profitability.

“Forever Flash fundamentally is about customer choice, giving them the ability to choose for reasons that make sense to them–not the vendor–the level and timing of Capex vs. Opex that is most beneficial to them. Our sales reps can open new doors and up-level discussions around flash to C-level executives who care about operational and capital savings (which is inherent in Pure Storage FlashArray) and now also available in the pricing model. Enabling customers to shift IT budgets from Capex to Opex and eliminate costly forklift upgrades or maintenance renewals demonstrates long term value to customers, who appreciate the simplified ownership and upgrade model,” said John Woodall, VP of engineering, Integrated Archive Solutions. “Delivering both business and technology value, Pure Storage FlashArray means higher customer attach and renewal rates, thereby delivering higher profitability for partners.”