What new products were announced at Pure Storage's Accelerate 2019?

We pluck out the most head-turning news from the storage vendor's Accelerate partner event

Attendees of Pure Storage's Accelerate partner event this year saw a variety of new products and capabilities added to its portfolio.

CRN sister publication Channel Partner Insight picked out all the key information from the vendor's announcements in Austin.

Flash Array//C

The announcement that turned the most heads at Pure Storage's partner event in Austin was the launch of its Flash Array//C - which it claims will bring flash technology to tier-two applications for the first time.

The new flash array (pictured) is available now and marks the first flash product from Pure that has been specifically built for less mission-critical workloads. Pure describes it as the "industry's first" capacity optimised all-flash array.

Pure claims the new flash array is cost-competitive with disk technologies that customers are currently using for so-called tier two applications. Using a flash array for these workloads will mean less latency and management complexity as well as reducing the need for a replacement device every three-to-five years, Pure claims.

VP of strategy for Pure Storage, Matt Kixmoeller, said: "We found that our customer's tier-two data was a significant source of pain because no one had done the work to make tier two better. While flash had revolutionised tier one, tier two was still a huge problem."

The product doesn't replace Pure's flagship Flash Array X product, but is a new addition for its portfolio specifically targets tier two applications.

Kixmoeller suggested that its Flash Array X and C can be used in tandem to automatically migrate VMs from one data store to another across the two application tiers. He also said the Flash//C can be used as a disaster recovery solution or for development testing scenarios.

Pure as-a-Service

This one is a rebranding of Pure's Evergreen Storage Service (ES2) programme that it launched last year.

But now the offering covers Pure's entire integrated portfolio, including Cloud Block Storage and FlashBlade. It also leverages Cisco's as-a-service offering for its converged solutions.

"We've seen a huge growth in customer interest in buying in this way," said Kixmoeller.

"We've expanded Pure as-a-service now to essentially cover all of the products Pure offers. That was what really drove the renaming of the product line to make it clear that we now offer the complete Pure experience both as a traditional method of purchase as well as opex."

AI additions for FlashBlade

Pure Storage has announced a partnership with NVIDIA to create what it calls the AI Data Hub. The vendor describes it as an end-to-end solution that streamlines the deployment of an AI pipeline from proof of concept to production.

Pure has gathered together a group of partners with AI-ready datacentres to help customers to manage their AI infrastructure.

New Azure and AWS integrations

Pure's CloudSnap - a backup solution enabled with AWS - is now also available through Microsoft Azure. Cloud Block Store has also been integrated with AWS.