Pure Storage Powers State and Local Agencies

Pure Storage, Inc. announced the FlashArray family continues to gain traction in state and local data center environments.

Pure delivers the simplicity, ease of administration, power efficiency, security and performance needed to run critical workloads within government agencies. The FlashArray also meets the availability, reliability and scalability requirements of government agencies across the US.

Public sector organizations continue to face challenges in relation to data, resources and increased workloads that require efficiency in how they acquire, store, use and analyze data. These agencies have a responsibility to citizens to make sound technology investments that get the most out of every dollar spent. Citizens hold government organizations accountable and expect the same level of service from the government as delivered in the private sector. This can be difficult for organizations that may have limited control over the amount of budget they receive, while facing increased expectations to deliver innovation.

Citizens expect agencies to capitalize on technical innovation to create a smarter, more connected and secure government. Among the top technology trends for government as listed in a June 2016 press release, Gartner Highlights Top 10 Strategic Technologies for Government in 2016, were companies offering multi-channel citizen engagement, of one requirement is “using data to capture and understand the needs and desires of the citizen.”

Also listed among the top technology trends was the use of digital government platforms, “these platforms deliver services such as payments, identity management and verification, reusable application services and notifications (for example, SMS and email) that are commonly used across multiple domains.“

Additionally, there is citizen electronic identification, “As government becomes more digitalized, digital identity will need to become more reliable in order to serve as the core for all digital transactions. Citizen electronic identification (e-ID) refers to the orchestrated set of processes and technologies managed by governments to provide a secure domain to enable citizens to access these core resources or services.“

“Our government customers have experienced superior levels of performance and reliability with Pure, which means they can put their focus and resources toward improving business outcomes for the citizens they serve,” said David Hatfield, president, Pure. “At Pure, we remain true to our mission of disrupting the status quo and delivering storage innovation that surpasses our customers’ and partners’ expectations.“

Pure state and local customers detail their transformation with all-flash storage.

Town of Milton
As one of Canada’s fastest growing communities, the Town of Milton is focused on building a complete community by providing a place to live, learn, work and grow. Milton is home to a highly skilled, well-educated, young population, and is in close proximity to one of the world’s most active transportation and logistics corridors. Milton has enjoyed steady population growth year after year for the past decade and boasts some of the lowest residential and business property taxes in the area.

“Milton is a thriving place with a growing population which means the IT team has to expand our infrastructure to keep up with the increasing demands for services and records to keep the Town running,” said Frank Adili, director of IT, Town of Milton. “We have a small IT team, so when we choose technology it has to be simple, efficient and have the ability to scale quickly. Pure is transforming our environment and is helping us save time and money for the benefit of the taxpayers.“

City of Garland
The City of Garland, TX, knows first-hand that delivering efficient services to modern cities places significant demands on the IT department. Garland, with a population of more than 230,000 is part of the fourth largest region in the nation (the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex), and continues to attract new business and corporate expansions. The city’s IT department – which operates three data centers and connects to nearly 50 sites around the city – supports 40 departments, including the municipal utility supplying electricity, water and waste-disposal services. More than 300 production servers run a broad range of applications, including human resources, finance, e-mail, imaging, code enforcement, geographic information systems and utility billing.

“We were looking for something to budget for the following year for our VDI project,” said Stephanie Thompson, lead systems administrator, City of Garland, “so we weren’t planning on purchasing anything immediately. But (during a POC) the utility billing team said they didn’t want to go back to the way it was before Pure, so they (utility billing team) offered to fund half of the price of the array. The MD of our customer service department called our CIO and said ‘What did you do? This is fantastic!’ and then offered us a funding source – that just never happens!“

Colorado Department of Education
The Colorado Department of Education provides leadership, resources, support and accountability to the state’s 178 school districts, 1,836 schools, close to 56,000 teachers and over 2,800 administrators to help them build capacity to meet the needs of the state’s approximately 889,000 public school students. The mission of the Colorado Department of Education is to ensure that all students are prepared for success in society, work, and life by providing excellent leadership, service, and support to schools, districts, and communities across the state.

“We were struggling with our legacy storage vendor and we knew that we needed a new solution,” said Steve Berryman, infrastructure manager, Colorado Department of Education. “We decided to go with Pure Storage because the Evergreen Storage business model means the refresh is painless, our total data reduction is even better than expected and the array was easy to install. With Pure, we don’t have to worry about managing storage.“

More about Pure’s work with state and local agencies