Pure Storage expands operations to EMEA

Pure Storage, the all-flash enterprise storage array company, has expanded its operations to help businesses in EMEA deliver data faster, using less space and power. The company's high performance, scalable storage array makes all-flash a reality for businesses and allows them to handle their data more efficiently. Its expansion to this market addresses the growing amount of data that needs to be stored, secured and quickly accessed, within enterprises and fulfills plans outlined in the company's last financing round, when it was backed by Index Ventures.

Demonstrating the company's commitment to the region and confidence in the simplicity, data reduction capabilities, performance and cost savings benefits of its all-flash array, the company launches in EMEA with a guarantee: love your FlashArray, or your money back. While guarantee programmes are not new to the storage industry, previous programmes have been overly complex and focused solely on providing assurances around capacity. Pure Storage believes that all-flash storage isn't just faster storage—it's fundamentally better storage, and developed the "Love Your Storage" Guarantee to ensure its customers feel confident in every dimension of their decision to make the move from mechanical disk.

"We see exploding demand for all-flash storage systems in EMEA particularly as more companies struggle to cope with the demand for fast access to data and applications," said John Silva, EMEA Regional Director at Pure Storage. "Businesses need more storage capacity, more performance and more resilience and efficiency than existing disk or hybrid solutions can offer. Using FlashArray, a financial trading firm would, for example, be able to buy and sell shares more quickly, improving their profitability. In addition, FlashArray has been shipping for more than two years so we are bringing a wealth of experience from the U.S., as well as a mature product, to this market. "

"The all-flash array space is one of the hottest topics in enterprise IT right now, and in the last few months we've seen a surge in interest that validates the approach and demonstrates that AFAs are not just a 'flash in the pan,'" said Simon Robinson, research vice president, storage and information management at 451 Research. "Pure Storage's initial traction indicates that customers are writing cheques for innovative, ground-up approaches to using flash in enterprise storage architectures, making this a good time for the company to expand overseas to maximise its opportunity. I'm sure organisations in EMEA will prove receptive to Pure Storage's offering."

"EMEA represents a substantial market opportunity for all-flash storage systems; we believe Pure Storage is best positioned to address that opportunity," said Mike Volpi, partner at Index Ventures. "Their North American momentum sets them up to extend naturally into EMEA and we are very pleased to see the company executing on its planned global expansion."

During the last quarter, the company has:

• established its first customer deployments in the region
• set up its European headquarters in the UK
• assigned key reseller, distribution, and support relationships stretching from Norway to South Africa
• made available 24x7 support with 4-hour onsite service for this market

The company's introduction to the European market underscores its rapid global expansion, as evidenced by a separate announcement issued today, in which it detailed its concurrent launch into the Asia Pacific region.

"It's an exciting time for Pure Storage," said David Hatfield, president at Pure Storage. "The company's accelerated expansion is being driven by customer and partner demand in the region, which validates that our go-to-market approach, technology and customer support are well-aligned with the needs of the European marketplace. We will continue to aggressively scale our international operations to support our enterprise customers across the UK, Europe and beyond, and look forward to bringing the benefits of the FlashArray to even more customers in the region."

Supporting EMEA Channel Partner Quotes

Purity, Norway

"A leading supplier of storage and backup solutions in the Nordics, Purity is committed to unearthing next generation storage solutions like the Pure Storage FlashArray, that support building more efficient IT infrastructures through the deployment of virtualisation strategies and green storage initiatives," said Kjell Rune Øyrås, Partner and Co-founder, Purity AS. "We're proud to be partnering with Pure Storage to bring its leading edge enterprise storage array to the Nordic market. FlashArray delivers dramatic storage consolidation benefits that will help our customers to reduce their data centre footprint, while delivering strong performance gains and simplified management."

Polcom, Poland

"For more than 20 years, Polcom has been among the first resellers to identify the world's most promising IT technologies, like the Pure Storage FlashArray, and bring them to the European market," said Marcin Gwozdz, CEO at Polcom. "Polcom has been responsible for building one the biggest and most modern data centres in Poland and is dedicated to continuing to staying at the forefront of technological innovation, by partnering with ground-breaking solution providers like Pure Storage to deliver the best emerging technologies to our customers."

John Silva biography

The company also announced it has appointed storage industry veteran John Silva to lead its EMEA operations. Prior to joining Pure Storage, Silva served as EMEA Sales Director for HP's 3PAR storage division, where he scaled its business throughout the European market. He has held similar positions at 3PAR Data, Hitachi Data Systems and EMC. Since joining Pure Storage in Q4 2012, he has led the creation of a world-class team, signed key partnerships across multiple countries and built out the support and distribution infrastructure that the company's EMEA-based customers will expect and need.