Pure Storage: Flexibility and Choice to Customers Navigating Challenging Environment

Recognizing the business and social challenges presented by Covid-19, Pure Storage, Inc. has announced a set of flexibility programs to provide extra help to customers as they navigate shifting resource demands and ways of working in a rapidly changing environment.

Flashblade appliance

Organizations everywhere have seen increases in the need to support remote workers. For many, this has driven urgent and unbudgeted storage requirements to enhance the infrastructure needed for key applications and services, increasing demand for more flexible consumption models. Others need ways to get up and running with new systems even when it’s not possible to have teams onsite. These new programs are the company’s way of providing a one-stop resource for enterprises going the extra mile for their own customers and end users, with a focus on getting them what they need most when presented with new and urgent challenges.

“Technology doesn’t eclipse what’s happening around the world right now, but it does play a critical role in finding innovative solutions to keeping the global economy moving,” said Joe Pinto, chief customer experience officer. “We’re all in this together and feel it is our responsibility to help our customers and our community navigate this new reality as best we can.“

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Here’s what you’ll find among firm’s flexibility programs:
Flexible consumption models. Pure as-a-Service is offered free for the first 3 months for new customers with a 12-month contract term of 50TB or more, or 6 months free with a 24-month term. This storage as-a-service offering is a utility for which customers are billed based on consumption. This helps customers manage costs over time without a long term contract, particularly in a period when it may be difficult to predict ongoing requirements.

Additionally, as many customers face facilities access limitations and IT staffing challenges, the operational benefits of subscribing to a service are significant. Pure as-a-Service scales up or down as usage changes, and that elasticity provides a safeguard for customers concerned about outgrowing storage.

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Getting VDI right. For enterprises, the sudden increase in supporting remote employees can present challenges that include growing pains in IT infrastructure. The firm’s data experience provides a fast, resilient, simple to manage, and scalable all-flash platform for Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI). The company has partnered with Cisco Technology, Inc. to offer pre-configured, scalable VDI solution bundles that start at 1,000 desktops.

Remote installation options. The need for reliable data services is growing exponentially as more employees require remote access to company data. Remote Installation Service for FlashBlade and FlashArray can get you up and running even when it’s not possible for our teams to physically work onsite in your facilities.

Customers can install themselves, with us via videoconference, or have us do the install for them. Either way, our new remote installation service is made possible by new features in Purity 3.0 for FlashBlade, our Customer Experience (CX) delivery team, and a set of battle-tested scripts from the company’s engineers.

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Mobile system management and assistance. Customers need instant access to information about their storage inventory, capacity consumption and performance no matter where they are working. The Pure1 Mobile app delivers a view of critical system information and allows to enable Remote Assist from virtually anywhere so that Pure Support can remotely provide diagnostic information or perform system upgrades.

Self-service product test drives. To quickly and easily evaluate the firm’s products and solutions without having to ship hardware to a physical site, customers can experience self-service, on-demand instances of Pure Test Drive and Proof of Concept Labs. Pure1 Workload Planner software will also help customers simulate load and capacity requirements, reducing guesswork and avoiding costly infrastructure mistakes. Try out a Test Drive

Contributing to the collective research efforts around the world. Close to home and in the broader global community, Pure has donated products to companies involved in the fight against COVID-19. For example, it provided FlashBlade technology, at no charge, to Folding@Home, a distributed computing project focused on helping scientists develop new therapeutics to a variety of diseases by the means of simulating protein dynamics. The FlashBlade technology is a key element of Folding@Home’s strategy to accelerate their analytics and drive faster time to value.

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