Dell crashes Pure Storage's partner event

Vendor giant makes its presence known as storage rival hosts conference in its backyard in Austin

Dell has imposed itself on Pure Storage's partner conference in Austin through running a fleet of self-branded rickshaws at the venue's entrance.

Decked with Dell Technologies' blue colours, the unwelcome rickshaws have been transporting Pure Storage delegates from outside the Austin Convention Centre on the opening day of the storage vendor's Accelerate partner conference.

The PR stunt is an obvious jab at long-standing rival Pure Storage, which is hosting its partner conference in the same city where Dell was founded and just 20 miles away from Dell's global headquarters in Round Rock, Texas.

The move from Dell mirrors a marketing campaign by Pure Storage in the run up to its Accelerate 2019 conference in sponsoring a public bicycle hire scheme called BCycle throughout the city of Austin, with the slogan: "Why Walk? Accelerate" (pictured right).

This isn't the first time Dell has paid an unwanted visit to one of its rival's partner conferences. In 2016, it invaded HPE's event in Boston with a troop of performers wearing Dell EMC-branded balloons outside the venue.

EMC, which was acquired by Dell for $67bn in 2015, and Pure Storage are bitter rivals. The firms were locked in a multi-faceted legal dispute between 2013 and 2016 over patent infringement and breaches in confidentiality.