Pure Storage makes non-US growth a priority

Flash firm's CEO Dietzen sets out plan of action

Pure Storage has said growing its international business is a priority as it looks to more evenly distribute its success.

Pure's chief executive Scott Dietzen (pictured) told CRN that although the firm is performing "phenomenally" - particularly in the US - the success it is having is "not evenly distributed" across the firm.

He would not be drawn on whether he meant geographically or across business units, but did say that bumping up the proportion of business which goes through its international territories is important.

At the moment, 80 per cent of its business comes from the US, with the rest coming from its entire international operations.

Dietzen said changing these figures is a priority.

"If we're successful - the goal is to be the number-one storage platform in the world - long before we achieve number-one status, the business will tip predominantly [towards] international," he said. "We started in North America first and I am frankly thrilled that the North American growth hasn't slowed. We can't keep growing at 167 per cent, but we would like to keep growing faster than anyone has grown a systems business. International does need to become the majority of the business over time."

Last year, rumours circulated that Pure was suffering growing pains in EMEA and that staff were not hitting their targets.

Dietzen said employees are judged not specifically on their numbers, but on a metric he called "participation", which is "roughly defined as the percentage of your field organisation that is at play - achieving their targets."

He said participation needs to be improved across the board.

"Participation is an area we need to get better, globally, not just in the regions," he said. "We've had great success but, as is often the case, the success is not evenly distributed."

Pure has always operated a 100 per cent channel model, and Dietzen said no matter how much his company grows, this will remain the case.

"Half the business now is partner-led, which was not true when we last met [in 2013], when we were bringing business to the partners," he said. "Now they are bringing more business to us, which we are thrilled about."

Pure floated on the New York Stock Exchange last summer, which he said has boosted its channel business due to the "substantial increase" in brand awareness. "There's a level of trust that comes [with it too] because they can see the financials," he said. "The channel knows that we are going to be there."

Soon after Pure Storage went public, Dell announced plans to buy EMC, and consequently take the listed firm private.

Dietzen said he welcomes scrutiny of its public results but said he thought the same could not be said for his firm's rival EMC.

"My personal view is that it's very hard to swap a product portfolio as a public company," he said. "Our view of the world is their top product lines - VMAX and VNX - are both going to go to zero dollars in revenue, other than maintenance, over the next refresh cycle. In four or five years they will be zero-dollar products. Trying to manage a product transition of that magnitude as a public company is a really hard thing to do, so it's no surprise that they want some time as a private company to make product changes and try to change the revenue over without being in public scrutiny."

EMC was not immediately available to comment on the claims.

Dietzen added: "Our feeling is the opposite: we are very confident in our business and we welcome the public scrutiny because it is such a compelling story. We think we're the only ones who have even close to the recipe right today. As a result, even though we are only six and a half years old, we look like the most stable company in storage because we don't have to make dramatic changes that the competition does to stay successful."