Sign in / up

back to article Pure Storage sets out stall: We want to rule the storage world

Storage industry lore has it that NetApp has been the only stand-alone storage company after EMC to establish its technology as a storage platform. Now Pure Storage, the energised all-flash array (AFA) startup, says it wants to be the next storage platform company. NetApp's offering comprises a long-lived storage system with a …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lesson learned

    The Storage world has learned a major lesson since netapp and that is not to ignore the competition. Netapp not only had new technology, this thing called "snapshot" and and a filesystem. These were significant, paradigm shift changes from what the storage world was used to at the time. However, netapp was largely ignored by its competitors and it wasn't until years later that the likes of EMC decided to compete and by then it was just too late. I'd be willing to bet if netapp were to start again today the results may have been different.

    I'm not sure what exactly Pure storage sell as Dedupe/compression on a flash array is not exactly a high barrier to entry and the large vendors do pay attention. Statistically speaking the deck is stacked against them but it'd be good to see them establish themselves.

    3 0
  2. Alex McDonald 1

    "The storage world"? It was just boxes of RAID5 disks.

    'The Storage world has learned a major lesson since netapp and that is not to ignore the competition..." Prior to NetApp, "the storage world" was just big boxes of disks banged together with (if you were lucky) a RAID controller. And EMC didn't ignore us; they found it really hard to compete with us.

    NetApp made the technologies by which others measure themselves, even EMC. That's a set of technologies that we've used over the years to deliver advantage for our customers. It includes file-based storage systems, storage virtualisation, snapshots, capacity & performance effective RAID, dedupe, thin provisioning, compression and more. And if you reran the tape again, I bet the outcome would be about the same.

    I agree with you that Pure are yet another startup that aren't redefining this industry; they're mimicking NetApp technologies. The deck is stacked against them because it's a "me too" business (with added flash). While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it rarely guarantees success.

    Disclosure: NetApp employee.

    3 3
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Personally I don't think anyone should take them seriously until they lose the color Orange from their branding and stop wearing silly hats at trade shows.

    1 0
  4. Rol

    By and by

    1.. Buy all your competitors.

    2.. Buy all new players

    3.. Seek legislation making it illegal to compete with you, (Buy enough politicians)

    0 0
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So looks like Pure's future direction is to become a hybrid array ... errr, isn't that the position that most of the main vendors are already in? At the moment the message from Pure is why put anything on spinning disk when it 'may' be cheaper to put it on flash, but their future direction is admitting that even greater economies can be made by putting cold data on spinny stuff and just the hot data on flash!

    2 0
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What announcement?

    What announcement are you referring to? I know they did a recent product launch, but I don't recall any "Dr No" take over the world announcements.

    0 0
  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More things

    - Make money...they are buying business right now

    - Retain employees, they are overpaying their sales force (based on the market) to recruit the top guys from their rivals

    Investors have dumped an unprecedented amount of money into essentially a two controller system using SSD's. The power of Pure is their marketing and their ability to hire a large very competent sales force. The technology is very uninteresting. Kudos to them for keeping their name in the trade rags for poaching employees, and talking trash about EMC. Too bad their technology isn't getting that kinda press...a two controller box with SSD's.....

    4 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: More things

      +1 ... Pure Storage is... very marketing saavy... in a very crowded field.

      I have to give their marketing team props for pushing the envelope on keeping themselves in the limelight -- even their POC process that everyone uses is pitched as a "Love your Storage" guarantee...

      PR on hires ... check

      PR on new products ... check

      PR on promos ... check

      PR on customers ... check

      PR on vision ... check

      PR on Lawsuits... well not really a PR, but check on the awareness

      PR on partners ... check

      PR on momentum ... check

      PR on funding... huge check

      PR on awards ... check

      The only thing I can think of is ... them issuing a PR complaining about their crappy booth location at trade shows. Don't get me wrong -- I am a fan. They have a good product and excellent momentum. Heck they even have an evangelist with an awesome hair style.

      0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.