Pure's IPO has storage world on edge of seat

Flash rivals claim Pure's rapid rise is indicative of the booming market

The arrival of Pure Storage on the stock market is an indication of how exciting the storage market is at the moment, according to the firm's rivals.

Pure Storage joined became a public company this afternoon, joining the New York Stock Exchange under the "PSTG" symbol. Shares are currently trading at between $16 and $17 each.

In an announcement, Pure said: "An IPO is akin to getting a job promotion - one is grateful for the raise and recognition, but even more excited to dig into the expanded role.

"No doubt we will all pause to celebrate this milestone, but then it is back to work to accomplish what we set out to do. Being public provides all of our stakeholders with greater transparency that will only raise expectations going forward."

The bullish company has grown rapidly since its inception, and its aggressive marketing campaign – which has embroiled it in a war of words with numerous rivals, mainly EMC – has helped it become a big name in the channel.

It is set to become one of a number of storage firms to have taken the plunge and gone public in the past few years. Nimble Storage and Violin memory are both public, but trade at a much lower value than they did when they first floated.

The chief executives of both firms said Pure's rapid rise demonstrates the success of storage upstarts.

Nimble's boss Suresh Vasudevan said: "The dinosaurs of the storage industry are experiencing double-digit product revenue declines as they are unable to rapidly innovate to address changing customer expectations.

"Their legacy business models are not sustainable. We congratulate Pure on its IPO, which underscores the accelerating pace at which the storage industry is evolving."

Violin's top dog Kevin DeNuccio concurred.

"The Pure Storage IPO reinforces what Violin is hearing from customers, namely that there is a strong appetite by enterprises to leverage flash storage in the datacentre," he said. "The industry is also further confirming that next-generation vendors are a key part of the massive disruption occurring in storage."

Violin itself floated back in 2013, debuting at $8 per share, but today, shares trade for around $1.61. Tech firm Box floated this year too, and now trades well below its debut price.

Rob Commins, vice president of marketing at storage firm Tegile, said although not all tech IPOs have enjoyed immediate success, he wishes Pure well.

"It has been a tough year for IPOs, but the storage market is incredibly hot – driven by the effects of flash in next-generation systems optimised for it," he said. "So we expect and hope to see Pure Storage do very well this week. At Tegile, we compete against Pure in the all-flash segment as well as Nimble in the hybrid segment. All three of us have done and will continue to grow our businesses quickly at the expense of the incumbent players."

EMC and Pure Storage have been fierce rivals for years. Josh Goldstein, general manager for EMC's flash product XtremIO, has been an outspoken critic of Pure since the start, and was quick to rubbish Pure's plans to float when they were first announced.

Speaking to CRN last night, Goldstein drew comparisons between Pure and Violin's rise.

"They are comparable in many ways," he said. "If you look at Violin... and Pure Storage, they are well-publicised companies which grew rapidly in their early years.

"Certainly for Violin, they were also losing a lot of money and there was a lot of hype around the offering, but they couldn't survive... as a public company. If you look at the timeline and progression... for both of those companies, they were pretty similar leading up to the IPO. There are some parallels you can draw."

He added that whatever the outcome, Pure's IPO will be interesting to watch.

"It is going to be one of the most interesting lessons in market psychology and billion-dollar unicorns you will ever see," he said. "It will be quite interesting."