The advancements in data storage technologies have enabled organizations to unlock the true value of data and manage it more efficiently. Modern technologies changing the IT infrastructure and empowering IT leaders to have more control for utilizing the data. Pure Storage is one of the fastest growing companies in the storage space serving organizations across verticals. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal recently interacted with Sudharsan Aravamuthan, Head of Systems Engineering, Pure Storage India. He talked about their growth plans, offerings, new technologies and much more. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: What is your role at Pure Storage?
Sudharsan: In this role, my team and I are responsible for driving technical strategy to help customers navigate their digital transformation journeys with modern data solutions.
Rajeev: Can you outline the growth plans for Pure Storage in India?
Sudharsan: We are still relatively new to the India market having only established a sales presence here two years ago. But there was clearly a pent up demand for our data storage and management solutions. As an example, according to the IDC Enterprise Storage Tracker for Q1 2022, Pure Storage in India grew 233.4% year-over-year outpacing the overall India external OEM market’s growth of 98%.
We will continue to grow our team to meet the demand in the market. We are fiercely proud of our customer satisfaction ratings and want to ensure that we have the means to support our customers and partners here.
The establishment of the R&D Center in Bengaluru this year will further bolster our presence and demonstrates our commitment to India and our commitment to innovation.
Rajeev: How do you see the current state of storage technology in India? How has the pandemic changed the sector?
Sudharsan: Pure Storage’s recent Q2 FY23 earnings are a good indication that data storage and management remains a growth sector globally and we see this playing out in India as well. The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation plans for many organizations. This has in turn provided another spurt in the growth of data, in particular, unstructured data.
This has elevated the strategic role of data storage and management in overall IT strategy as organizations look for solutions to better store, manage, move, analyze and protect their data.
Rajeev: How is modern data storage changing the IT infrastructure?
Sudharsan: Three things have happened that have made IT leaders rethink their IT strategies. First, as the pandemic has shown, companies must innovate and rapidly deploy new and more advanced digital functionality to continue operating. Secondly, consumer expectations continue to require more robust, more useful, and more innovative ways to interact with companies, across a wide array of verticals. And thirdly, data has never been more important to separating out the companies that succeed in this new world from those that fall behind.
Initially, many companies turned to public cloud but the cost of data egress, the sensitivity of data, regulatory regimes, and application requirements that demand more performance than cloud storage can provide caused them to turn inward, and work to modernize their own IT infrastructure, including storage. Traditional on-premise infrastructure remains the home for core applications but having experienced the flexibility of the cloud, some companies are looking for a way to build a cloud-like experience on-premise. This is where Pure Storage can help them. We understand the challenges that our customers are facing and have the solutions to help them solve those challenges and help them build the next generation of infrastructure architecture, what is sometimes called “infrastructure as code”.
Infrastructure as code enables organizations to give their developers speed and flexibility and making things so simple that innovation cycles speed up.
Rajeev: What according to you will be storage technology trends in India in the next 2-3 years?
Sudharsan: Pure sees three big themes that will impact enterprise storage in the coming years. The first is the Anywhere Service Economy. IT leaders are looking for more control and flexibility in how they consume and utilize their IT assets.
The old model of buying once every three to five years just does not work anymore especially if the technology refresh requires expensive and time consuming forklift upgrades. Moreover, in a dynamic and fast moving environment, capacity needs can spike and ease off within seconds. IT leaders need to have the flexibility to scale up or down their storage capacity cost effectively.
The second big theme is Infrastructure as Code. An infrastructure as code platform integrates self-service IT experiences and scale-out, on-demand solutions that rise above physical architecture limitations. Essentially, it enables organizations to adopt a cloud-like operating model on top of their infrastructure to deliver a cloud-like experience for IT teams and storage consumers.
This becomes even more critical with the rise of cloud-native modern apps where DevOps teams need to rapidly deploy their apps without having to worry about infrastructure. Organizations want a new experience from their on-prem infrastructure to better support the agility needed to quickly pivot with unexpected changes.
Third, IT leaders are increasingly tasked with ESG KPIs and to play their part in the organization’s journey towards sustainability. Data centers consume a lot of electricity. The right technology choices can drastically reduce energy bills as well as free up valuable real estate footprint. We have customers who have told us that the money saved from their energy bill paid for our solutions.
