"We are focused on expanding our channel ecosystem and finding the partners that share our commitment to customer success"

A new entrant in the India market, Pure Storage sees AI, machine learning, IoT, containers and especially 5G as opportunities for partners. The company has also enhanced its partner program so that its partners are able to deliver Pure’s portfolio of solutions with ease. In a chat with VARINDIA, Jithesh Chembil, Head Channels, India, Pure Storage discusses about the opportunities, changing trends, company’s partner program, enablement of partners, go to market strategy and much more

How is the trend changing from Edge, Core To cloud or vice versa in the present circumstances?

With the pandemic, we have seen a lot of movement to the cloud but we expect this trend to slow down and even reverse as companies discover that the economics of the cloud could be more onerous than they first expected. So we expect to see a blended approach moving forward, with a multi-cloud approach.

Kindly brief about the partner program of Pure Storage?

It is not a new program, rather it is an enhancement of our program. The enhancements provide partners with increased incentives, marketing, support, and training solutions. Pure also announced the availability of the new Pure WaveMakers program to reward Pure’s partners who are leaders in solution selling, training and sales. Pure WaveMakers is a new, global community program to empower, enable, and recognize partner technical professionals employed by Pure Storage Go-To-Market Partners - VARs, Distributors, MSPs & GSIs.

How is Pure empowering the partners with flexibility to meet customers’ needs, so to make the technologies and services more accessible?

That is precisely why we have made enhancements to our partner program. To enable our partners to easily deliver the Modern Data Experience by providing solutions that are seamless, flexible, reliable and provide a subscription to innovation. The Pure Partner Program evolves continuously to ensure partners always have what they need to deliver Pure’s portfolio of solutions.

For example, our new Partner Portal provides the latest sales and technical resources, training, personalized marketing campaigns, a digital asset library, social selling content and more, all at the partners’ fingertips.

Pure also expanded the Pure Sizer Tool, the platform used for all FlashArray//X sizing activity that highlights recommended configurations and provides additional models to consider based on Pure1's backend analytics. Partners now have access to the Pure Sizer Tool for the FlashArray//X70 and //X90 models providing them with instant access to performance and capacity sizing information for the entire FlashArray//X portfolio. Partners can size configurations based on capacity and performance needs using input gathered from the customer’s environment and understand the capacity and environmental specifications for a FlashArray.

We have also evolved our training resources to meet the partner’s needs and enable them to grow their knowledge with the portfolio. Partners can now follow a personalized learning path based on their specific role. The training can be consumed in a self-serve fashion with on-demand courses, as well as instructor-led training, featuring hands-on demos, all online. New training courses are also available on selling subscriptions and new use cases for file and object storage.

With the deployments of IoT, many devices generate enormous amounts of data during the course of their operations, many are preferring to go for the edge compute for competitive pricing advantage, what are opportunities you are foreseeing?

With digital transformation accelerating across industries, we see many opportunities for partners to help their customers. 5G, AI, machine learning, IoT, containers and other emerging technologies are all opportunities for our partners. We think 5G in particular will be a catalyst for a new burst of innovation. We have seen this in the past every time there has been a 10X jump in performance and we expect to see innovations across the board. The partners that can help their customers take advantage of these opportunities will be the winners.

What would be the GTM to attract the VARs, since you have surrounded by competitions?

There are many reasons for our partners to want to work with Pure. First of all, we are the innovation leader in all-flash solutions for enterprise and multi-cloud environments as evidenced by the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage. Secondly, our solutions are powerful and reliable, yet simple to install and manage. Third, Pure has a portfolio of solutions that our partners can easily integrate into their own offerings and provide powerful deliverables for their customers, and with our Evergreen program provide cost-effective investment protection for years. And last but not least, Pure never competes with our partners as we are 100% partner-centric.

What kind of Growth you are expecting in one year down the line?

As a public listed company, we do not provide growth projections by country but we are generally optimistic about India. We have just formally entered India this year and have already seen that there is demand for our solutions.

Can you brief on the growth strategy you have designed for India specific as the region and what are the marketing activities you have in place to achieve the target?

Right now, we are focused on expanding our channel ecosystem and finding the partners that share our commitment to customer success. With regards to marketing, due to the pandemic, we have shifted our focus on virtual events. There is undoubtedly fatigue around webinars and virtual events so we have tried to be creative and varying our tactics in order to reach the right audience.

Can you please explain on the tagline - A Modern Data Experience? 

The Modern Data Experience, simply put, is how enterprises should be able to manage their data simply, reliably and sustainably. Through our portfolio of products and services, Pure has continued to chart the course for storage to be dynamic and provide a cloud-like experience via shared services, flexible on-demand consumption and responsive to the needs of the application.