Pure Storage EMEA channel boss: 'We were surprised that we haven't seen a slowdown in business'

Matthieu Brignone tells CRN that back-end incentives are here for at least the next year and why partners should consider incorporating as-a-service into their business models

Pure Storage hasn't seen the same negative impact from the pandemic as it's storage rivals, according to its EMEA channel boss Matthieu Brignone.

While rivals Nutanix and NetApp have both undergone cost-cutting actions and job losses as a result of the COVID pandemic, Pure has managed to remain a steady ship in the storm, he said.

"We haven't seen any decline, which was a bit of a surprise," Brignone told CRN.

"To be perfectly honest, we haven't seen any slowdown coming from the channel ecosystem; the number of opportunities we were working on did not decrease and even increased significantly in many places - but that was not equal from one country to the next. For example, we've seen major increases in Germany because the lockdown in the pandemic was not managed in the same way there as it was in the UK, France, Spain or Italy.

"In the first six months, business was surprisingly good. But we don't know what's coming in the next six months - the only thing I can tell you is we are not experiencing any slowdown from the Pure partner community."

Pure has recently refreshed its partner programme which provides partners with increased incentives, marketing, support and training solutions.

Pure COO Paul Mountford and global channel boss Any Martin earlier this year revealed CRN's sister title CPI that the vendor was planning to reduce front end incentives on deals and focusing on back-end incentives in an effort to encourage partners to build practices around its technology and invest in newer parts of its portfolio.

Brignone said that partners have reacted well to the refreshed programme - which has been in place for around six weeks - adding that the core of the programme hasn't changed, it just now has some new tools for the channel's arsenal.

"The refresh is not going to change anything we've done in the last 12 months," he stated.

"We do have incentives which are actually on the front end and we do have some incentives on the back end already, but they are not made available to everyone in the same way. It depends on how the level of certification you have and the level of business you're doing with Pure.

"We did bring a few incentives in around eight or nine months ago and we are going to stick to them, not only until the end of this fiscal year but very likely into next year as well. When something works you don't change it."

Brignone was hesitant to predict the strength of the storage market in the short to mid-term but said that the market is "ready to grow" from the explosion of data that has come from the largescale shift to hybrid work environments.

However, an area of concern he does have is around certain partners' readiness and willingness to change to an as-a-service (aaS) business model.

"My one concern is that I'm not sure that every partner today is really ready to shift a significant part of their business to an aaS business model," he stated.

"Some big partners across EMEA decided to not push for the cloud-based offerings at all. They said ‘I'm going to wait for two or three years before I start implementing aaS into my portfolio'. Until recently, I would have said they were probably right, but I think the pandemic may change their reaction because of the way end customers are purchasing solutions."

Brignone said that he had anticipated the mid-market being the biggest consumer of Pure's aaS offerings, but that in the last number of months he has observed an increase in demand from larger organisations.

"We always made the assumption that aaS will be very popular with the mid-sized companies rather than the large ones," he noted.

"At Pure right now, we're seeing a big take off for aaS within the very large accounts - which is not something I would have foreseen. It's an indicator of a definite change in the way end customers are looking at purchasing solutions."