Pure Storage promises Elite partners a five per cent rebate on any as-a-service deal

Channel boss Andy Martin says rebate is simple and achievable for partners

Pure Storage has committed to give channel partners a five per cent rebate on any eligible as-a-service deal as it brings a raft of new changes to its partner programme.

Elite-level Pure Storage partners will now be able to earn back five per cent of the total contract value of Pure as-a-service deals of up to $100,000 per deal.

The rebate is available until 31 October 2021 and applies for the first Pure as-a-service opportunity for both new and existing customers, Pure Storage added.

Pure claims that the number of partners selling Pure as-a-service has doubled this year versus last year.

Speaking to CRN, Pure's global channel boss Andy Martin said that the as-a-service rebate was introduced to create more differentiation between its Elite-level and Preferred-level partners.

Pure restructured its channel in October last year, combining its GSI and MSP partner bases together into a single partner organisation.

The vendor meanwhile introduced new back-end incentives for its Cloud Block Store, as-a-service and FlashBlade offerings in March last year.

He added that the new five per cent as-a-service rebate for Elite partners is stackable with all other front-end and back-end rebates Pure offers.

"It's five per cent on any net-new as-a-service transaction in any account; it's that simple," said Martin.

Asked by CRN about how Pure's five per cent rebate stacks up against incentives offered by competitors, Martin assured that Pure's rebates are more simple and achievable for partners than some of its competitors.

He pointed to Dell's proposed 30 per cent referral incentive for partners selling its own APEX as-a-service offering as being too complicated.

"I read the same announcements you read in many of the publications and I can't figure the math out," he said.

"When you look at our total solution - front end, transfer price and back end - we are incredibly creative. And we're incredibly profitable for our partners, at least that's what our partners share with us. Because [our incentives] are real, because they can actually get them. We just shared how easy our back-end rebate is, it's pretty simple."

Pure's largest competitors have made big bets on shifting its business to an as-a-service model as of late. HPE recently launched its own storage as-a-service offer while the launch of Dell's APEX dominated discussions at last week's Dell Technologies World.

The Pure channel boss said that Pure is in no way trying to push its partners towards an as-a-service model, adding that it's just offering customers another option to pay for its products and services.

"We're not forcing anyone to do anything," he said. "For us it's just a buying vehicle."

"We're happy customers and prospects are looking at Pure, period. How they acquire it is totally up to the customer, the partner and the sales team. So whether they choose to acquire it via capex, a traditional lease or through as-a-service, we're just super humbled that they're looking at what we think is the world's best product."

"But What we're hearing from the partner community is ‘help us get to MRR and subscription selling, because that's what our customers want."

The storage vendor has also announced it has shifted its Portworx business, which it acquired in September last year, to a 100 per cent channel model.

This involved handing over all Portworx accounts to its partners once they reach renewal, Pure claims.

Portworx is a Kubernetes Data Services platform which runs mission-critical applications in containers. At the time of the acquisition, Pure said Portworx will enable customers to run any cloud-native data service across any cloud using any Kubernetes platform.

Martin said that Portworx now comes under Pure's partner agreement and Portworx partners will become "Pure authourised" after signing an addendum.

Pure will consult with Portworx customers to determine which partner they would prefer to work with and then hand over the account and push ahead with an onboarding process, Martin added.

The storage vendor has also extended its Pure1 platform to its partners to give them access to manage subscriptions on behalf of customers. Pure claims that customers using its self-service portal will also be able to buy new services or expand their as-a-service footprint via their channel partners.