Pure Storage’s Enterprise Data Cloud all about simplifying data management for storage

Pure Storage’s Enterprise Data Cloud enables businesses to avoid the complexity of data management and storage.

As data management is imperative for storage, Pure Storage has introduced the Enterprise Data Cloud (EDC) at its annual Pure//Accelerate summit in Las Vegas. EDC enables businesses to avoid the complexity of data management and storage by providing them with simplicity through an industry-changing architectural approach to data storage and management.

Specifically, IT teams centrally manage a virtualized cloud of data with unified control through EDC. This spans across on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid environments, enabling intelligent, autonomous data management and governance across the entire environment.

At the heart of EDC is Pure Fusion, unifying storage as a pool of adaptable resources. Pure Fusion is natively built into the arrays, which are self-discoverable so they can automatically discover a broader fleet without requiring in-depth storage admin configuration. Administrators can manage the fleet from any system because every array is an endpoint.

For Charles Giancarlo, Chairman and CEO of Pure Storage, the focus should now be on managing data instead of storage. Giancarlo pointed out that with AI increasing the potential value of enterprise data, and cyber-threats imperilling it, data storage architectures and the tools for managing data have not kept pace.

“Only Pure Storage has innovated an architectural approach that enables enterprise customers to manage their global data estate. Pure Fusion allows customers to create their own global Enterprise Data Cloud empowering them to manage their data with the control, automation and tracking needed to lead in a data-driven world,” said Giancarlo.

Apart from EDC, Pure Storage also unveiled several other solutions at the summit. They include capabilities to now enable the Pure Storage platform to deliver orchestrated workflows that can be deployed across the entire IT environment. Built on the thousands of existing connectors to third-party applications including Cisco, Microsoft, VMware, ServiceNow and Slack, presets and application “recipes” can be easily deployed across storage, compute, network, database and application configurations.

According to Mark Jobbins, VP and CTO, Asia Pacific & Japan, Pure Storge is giving the ability to provision either data environments or whole application environments far more quickly and in a standardized way.

“It's all about simplification and ease of management and allowing our customers to focus on leveraging their data rather than having to focus on the day-to-day operational side of things. We’re also building on our evergreen architecture and that will get better over time with new innovations coming out. As we have built that into our product sets, our customers can also take advantage of that through a non-destructive upgrade and actually then take benefit from that, which allows our customers to basically run any workload that they want based on this technology,” explained Jobbins.

Jobbins also mentioned that the challenge most organizations face today is having to deal with silos of technology and not being able to leverage and maximize the benefit out of that.

“We believe that we can solve that using this Enterprise Data Cloud strategy of automating the ability to move workloads between the Pure Storage arrays to optimize and maximize the benefit of that, be able to share the data in a more effective way and protect it. I think we're going to see that as the market evolves, customers are going to want to have this model because it reduces complexity, reduces risk and allows them to respond more quickly. And this is building more and more momentum in these areas,” added Jobbins.

Next-gen storage products

At the summit, Pure Storage also announced an expansion of its next-generation storage products designed for the most demanding, high-performance workloads. Pure Storage believes that only their platform offers the performance, efficiency, and intelligence to deliver such data management at scale, especially with increasing data volumes and demand for faster data management.

This is where Pure Storage FlashArray and Pure Storage FlashBlade are core to the EDC platform as well as it underpins the delivery of performance, reliability, and flexibility in a unified storage experience. The latest Pure Storage FlashArray and Pure Storage FlashBlade offerings extend the platform to unlock massive performance density gains, enabling faster results, and seamlessly scaling for future applications and demands - with capabilities to handle the full workload spectrum.

Taking a deeper look at the enhancements, the next generation of Pure Storage FlashArray, FlashArray//XL R5, sets the bar for performance at an extreme scale so customers can consolidate diverse workloads into a unified platform. The FlashArray//XL also doubles the amount of IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) per rack unit compared to the previous generation and increases max raw capacity by up to 50 percent.

Meanwhile, the next-generation controller blades in FlashBlade//S R2, the latest version of Pure Storage FlashBlade//S, enhance the platform to help organizations accelerate time-to-insight, consolidate infrastructure, and realize faster outcomes from the most demanding data pipelines. It performs up to 30% greater than competitors across critical workloads like genome sequencing, inference, and electronic design automation simulations, as well as other extensive datasets required for effective AI reasoning.

“We provide solutions across a broad range. We still have smaller capacity direct flash modules that meet the smaller requirements, and we're very conscious of that, and we want to enable customers in all markets to be on this journey. The great thing about Pure Storage is you don't have to overcommit from day one. You can start with an appropriately sized storage solution for your current needs. Because of the evergreen architecture, which allows customers to non-disruptively upgrade and change and move, they can then expand to meet those demands,” said Jobbins.

The role of partners

Given that Pure Storage is 100% channel driven, enabling partners is essential for them, especially in pushing out these latest innovations to customers.

Andrew Fisher, Area Vice President for Partners in APJ believes the latest announcements continue Pure Storage's commitment to helping its channel partners enhance their capabilities, providing even greater value to the end users.

“The Enterprise Data Cloud (EDC), for example, changes the focus to business outcomes, not infrastructure management. It’s a new architectural approach to data storage which gives organizations the ability to easily manage their data across their estate. For our partners, EDC is a game changer, enabling them to become true trusted advisors to their customers, helping them make the switch from managing their storage to managing their data,” said Fisher.

Fisher also mentioned that the number of next generation storage solutions to support better performance and scalability announced significantly enhances the Pure Storage Platform and provides channel partners with the foundation to layer on value-added services and drive profitable growth.

“The feedback from the customers that have got an insight to some of this has been very positive. It's tackling the challenges that they see on a day-to-day basis. They've been pushed; how do we keep the pace of innovation within their organizations? How do we leverage this massive tool set from AI? How do we then deploy and ensure that we're maximizing the efficiencies of all of our investments and at the same time, reducing risk? These are all front of mind for our customers and EDC provides a great balance for our customers to be able to do that and reduce risk whilst increasing innovation,” concluded Jobbins.