'This is a world's first' - Pure Storage expands Microsoft partnership to accelerate enterprise cloud adoption

Explaining more about what this deal means for partners, the market, and it’s competitors, Pure Storage EMEA channel sales VP Geoff Greenlaw speaks to CRN

Pure Storage today announced an expanded, multi-year strategic product and go-to-market partnership with Microsoft to bring its storage capabilities to native Microsoft Azure services.

The deal will leverage Azure's latest storage solution, Premium SSD v2 disk and introduce customers to Azure VMware Solution (AVS) in Preview.

Pure Cloud Block Store (CBS) for Azure VMware Solution enables customers to optimise AVS costs, take advantage of Evergreen innovation in Azure, accelerate and de-risk cloud migrations, implement flexible disaster recovery, simplify and unify storage strategy.

Speaking with CRN, Pure Storage VP of EMEA & LATAM channel sales, Geoff Greenlaw, outlines the aim of this expanded partnership with Microsoft.

"We're acknowledging that Pure is a player in the cloud-based VMware platform and the cloud storage market," he says.

"Those three dynamics coming together, three of the Goliath vendors in this space, I think that's what's really exciting for our partner ecosystem.

"These are all brand names that our partners are already transacting with, but to build a solution based on those three components coming together, I think is very important to note."

The EMEA partner boss adds there's an element of "uniqueness" to the partnership that he wants to get across to Pure's partners.

"We're building out our VMware capabilities. When you think about the Azure VMware solution, that is a fully managed VMware infrastructure inside of Azure," he explains.

"It gives the customers the capability to move, to build, to deploy, to migrate and provide that disaster recovery capabilities to their VMware infrastructure in the cloud.

"This is a world's first. We are providing a fully featured external block storage infrastructure to a VMware cloud offering."

Opportunity for partners

Greenlaw lays out three key ways Pure's channel partners should care about this expanded partnership.

"Firstly there's a professional services opportunity.

"I mentioned about building, migrating, deploying and moving data. It provides a really, really strong platform for [partners] to go and expand their professional services capabilities in their existing account and indeed new customers.

"Secondly, CBS is transactable through the Azure marketplace. So it's a brilliant co-selling opportunity for our partners.

"Finally, it's VMware and Pure Storage together. It doesn't become more powerful than that.

"You're already selling to those customers in a traditional environment, either on-prem or in the cloud. This is now bringing it all together to sell in the cloud.

"I would also say that VMware is a very channel-friendly company. Just like Pure Storage, they are 100 per cent indirect, 100 per cent of the time. So again, when you think about partners working with two, three vendors, these are vendors that will continue to run 100 per cent indirect all of the time."

Trends in the storage market

Analysts from Gartner, IDC and CONTEXT yesterday told CRN storage products are now being sold differently in response to Dell's move to sell more storage through the channel.

Greenlaw confirms Pure is also seeing the market move in this direction.

"We're definitely seeing that trend for sure.

"I think the opportunity for Pure is now. When we think about Evergreen//One and the way we deliver that technology is very differentiated from any of our competition.

"And I think our partners are now starting to see the benefits of that. The early adopters of Evergreen//One and the Evergreen portfolio are really starting to see the benefit of that with the cost savings that we can deploy.

"I like to think of it as, we're not selling a storage solution, we're selling a service. The service happens to be storage, but the way we deliver that is sold as-a-service.

"And again, that's very different from any of our competition and it's very unique in the market. So it's a good opportunity for our MSPs and our traditional resale partners to leverage the value proposition that we have."

After alluding to Pure's competitors, CRN pressed Greenlaw on Dell's recent partner pivot around its storage products.

Greenlaw stayed clear on commenting on Dell directly, and instead hammered home his message to partners.

"We have been 100 per cent indirect channel-focused since the day we were born and there's nothing is going to change there.

"Our chief exec stood on stage at Accelerate in Las Vegas back in June, and was very clear that we will continue to be a 100 per cent indirect sales model through our partner ecosystem.

"What the competition are doing, if they feel they're playing catch-up, that's entirely up to them, that's my view. I think they've realised that actually there's value in the channel.

"I also believe that when you say that you are putting opportunity through the channel and then do the opposite, that can have a negative impact on your channel partners.

"That's not the game that Pure will ever be in. We will continue to be 100 per cent indirect 100 per cent of the time. And that's the way that our partners are are seeing value in Pure because we do what we say on the tin."

Underscoring this point, Pure Storage came ahead as one of the key challengers in partner marketing for storage solutions, according to a recent piece of research by CRN parent, The Channel Company.