>> Announcer: From Austin, Texas it's The Cube
covering Pure Storage Accelerate 2019,
brought to you by Pure Storage.
>> Good morning.
From Austin, Texas, Lisa Martin with
Dave Vellante at Pure Accelerate 2019.
This is our second day.
We just came from a very cool, interesting,
keynote, Dave whenever there's astronauts
my inner NASA geek from the early 2000s.
She just comes right back up
Leland Melvin was on
>> Amazing, right?
>> With a phenomenal story.
Talking about technology and the feeling of innovation
but also a great story of inspiration
from a steam perspective science, technology,
engineering, arts, math, I loved that and,
>> Dave: And fun
>> Very fun.
But also...
>> One of the better talks I've ever seen
>> It really was. It had so many elements that I think
you didn't have to be a NASA fan
or a NASA geek or a space geek to appreciate the
all of the lessons that Leland Melvin
learned along the way that he really
is inspiring, everybody the audience to take note of.
It was I thought it was...
>> And incredibly accomplished, right?
I mean scientist, MIT engineer,
played in the NFL, went to space,
he had some really fun stuff when they were,
you know, messing around with with gravity.
>> Lisa: Yes.
>> I never knew you could do that. He had like this water.
>> Lisa: Water, yeah.
>> Bubble.
>> I'd never seen that before and
they were throwing M&M's inside
(laughter)
and he, you know consumed it choked on it,
which is pretty funny.
>> Yeah, well it was near and dear to me.
I worked with NASA my first job out of grad school.
>> Dave: Really?
>> I did, and managed biological pilots
that flew on the space shuttle and
the mission that the he talked about
that didn't land, Colombia.
That was the mission that I worked on.
So when he talked about that countdown clock going positive.
I was there on the runway with that.
So for me, it just struck a chord of,
>> Dave: so this is of course the
50th anniversary of the moonwalk.
And you know I have this thing about watches,
kind of like what you have with shoes
(chuckles)
>> Lisa: Hey, handbags.
>> Is that not true?
Oh, It's handbags for you?
(laughing)
>> Dave: I know this really that was a
terrible thing for me to say.
>> That's okay.
>> Dave: You have great shoes so I just I just assumed that
not good to make assumptions.
So I bought a moon watch this year
which was the watch that Neil Armstrong used
to not the exact one but similar one, right?
>> Lisa: Yeah.
And it actually has an acrylic
face because they're afraid if it cracked in space
you'd have glass all over the place.
[Lisa] Right.
So that's a little nostalgia there.
>> Well one of the main things too as you look
at the mission that President John F. Kennedy established
in the 60's for getting a man in space
in that 10-year period.
That being accomplished and
kind of a parallel with what Pure Storage has done
in its first 10 years of tremendous innovation.
This keynote again Day 2, standing room only
at least about 3000 people or so here.
Storage as James Governor said,
your friend and also who keynoted
after Leland this morning
you know, (mumbles) Software's eating the world
storage is eating the world
we have to have secure locations to store all this data
so that we can extract maximum value from it.
So nice parallel between the space program and Pure Storage.
>> James is really good, isn't he?
I mean he had to follow Leland and I mean again
one of the better talks I've ever heard,
but James is very strong, he's funny, he's witty
he's he cuts to the chase.
>> Lisa: Yes.
>> He always tells it like it is.
He's a very Monkchips is very focused on
developers and they do a really good job there,
one of the things he talked about was S3 and how Amazon
uses this working backwards methodology
which maybe a lot of people don't know about but
what they do is
they write and rewrite and rewrite
and vet and rewrite the press release
before they announce the product
and even before they develop the products
they write the press release
and then they work backwards from there.
So this is the outcome that we are trying to
achieve, and it's very disciplined process
that they use and as he said
they may revise it hundreds and hundreds of times
and he put up Andy Jassy's quote from 2004,
around S3.
That actually surprised me.
2000...Maybe I read it wrong.
>> Lisa: No, it was 2004.
>> Because S3 came out after EC2 which was 2006
so I don't know.
Maybe I'm getting my dates wrong or I think
James actually got his dates wrong but
who knows, maybe you know what?
Maybe he got a copy of that from the internal
working document, working backwards doc
that could be what it was
but again the point being
they envisioned this simple storage that
developers didn't have to think about
>> Lisa: Right.
>> That was virtually unlimited in capacity,
highly available and you know, dirt cheap
which is what people want
and so he talked about that
and then he gave a little history of the Dell
technology families
and I tweeted out this in a funny little
you know basically
pivotal VM ware EMC and Dell and their history
Dell was basically IPO 1984 and then today.
There was a few things in between I know
but he's got a great perspective on things
and I think it resonated with the audience
then he talked a lot about Kubernetes
jokingly tongue-in-cheek how Kubernetes
everybody thought was going to kill VMware
but his big takeaway was look
you got all these skills
of (mumbles) Skills, core
database skills, I would even add to that
you know understanding how storage works
and I always joke if your career is based on
managing lawns you might want to
rethink your career.
But his point was which I liked was
look all those skills you've learned are valuable
but you now have to step up your game and learn new skills.
You have to build on top of those skills
so the history you have and the knowledge that you've
built up is very valuable but it's not
going to propel you to the next decade and so
I thought that was a good takeaway and
it was an excellent talk.
>> So looking back at the conversations yesterday
the press releases that came out the advancements
of what Pure is doing, with AWS, with Nvidia,
with the AI data-hub for example,
delivering more of their portfolio as a service
to allow businesses whether it's a law-firm
like we talked to yesterday utility or Mercedes
AMG Petronas Motor-sport, to be able to access
data securely, incredibly quickly, recover it
restore it absolutely critical and really
can be game-changing depending on
the type of organization.
I want to get your perspectives on some of the
things you heard anecdotally yesterday after we wrapped
in terms of the atmosphere, the vibe,
the thoughts on Pure's next 10 years.
>> Yeah, so several things, just some commentary
so it's always good at night you go around
you get a lot of data we sometimes call it metadata.
I think one of the more interesting announcements
to me was the block-storage on AWS.
I don't necessarily think that this is going to be
a huge product near term for
Pure in terms of meaningful revenue,
but I think it's interesting that they're
embracing the trend of the Cloud and are
actually architecting Cloud solutions using Amazon services
and blending in their own
super gluing their own, I mean it's not really
superglue but blending in their own software
for their customers to extend.
Now, you know some of the nuances
I don't think they are going to have
they have better right performance
I think they'll have better read performance
clearly they have better availability
I think it's going to be a little bit more expensive.
All these things are TBD that's just my take
based on looking at what I've seen and talking to
some people but to me the important thing is that
Pure's embracing that Cloud model.
Historically, companies that are trying to
defend an existing business, they retreat.
You know, they denigrate they don't embrace.
We know that Pure's going to make more money on
pram than it does in the Cloud.
At least I think.
And so
it's to their advantage for companies to stay on-prem
but at the same time they understand
that trend is your friend and they're embracing that
so that was kind of one thing.
The second thing I learned is Charlie Giancarlo
spent a lot of time with them last night
as did you.
He's a bit of a policy wonk
in very certain narrow areas.
He shared with me some of the policy work
that he's done around IP protection
and not necessarily though on the side that you would think.
You would think that okay IP protection
that's a good thing but a lot of
the laws that were trying to be promoted for
IP protection were there to help big companies
essentially crush small companies
so he fought against that.
He shared with me some things around net neutrality.
You would think you know you think you know which
side of net neutrality he'd be on not
necessarily so he had some really interesting
perspectives on that.
We also talked to and I won't share the name of
the company but a very large financial
institution that's that's betting a lot on Pure
was very interesting to me.
This is one of the brand names
everybody would know it if you heard it.
And their head of storage infrastructure was
here, at the show.
Now I know this individual and this person
doesn't go to a lot of shows
>> Maybe a couple a year.
>> This person chose to come to this show because they're
making an investment in Pure.
In a fairly big way and they spent a lot of time
with Pure management, expressing their desires
as part of an executive form that Pure holds
they didn't really market that a lot they
didn't really tell us too much about it because
it was a little private thing but I happen to
know this individual and
and I learned several things.
They like Pure a lot, they use it for a lot
of their workloads, but they have a lot of
other storage, they can't necessarily get rid of
that other storage for a lot of reasons.
Inertia, technical debt, good tickets at the
baseball game, all kinds of politics
going on there.
I also asked specifically about some hybrid companies
products where the
the cost structure's a little bit better so
this gets me to flash array C
and we talked to Charlie Giancarlo about this
about his flash prices come down and it and opens up
new markets.
I got some other data yesterday and today
that you know that flash
array C is not going to be quite priced
we don't think as well as hybrid arrays
closing the gap
it's between one and one and a quarter,
one and a half
dollars per gigabyte whereas hybrid arrays
you are seeing half that, 70 cents a gigabyte.
Sometimes as low as 60 cents a gigabyte.
Sometimes higher, sometimes high as a dollar but
the average around 65-70 cents a gigabyte
so there's still a gap there.
Flash prices have to come down further.
Another thing I learned
I'm going to just keep going.
>> Lisa: Go ahead!
>> The other thing I learned is that
China is really building a lot of fab capacity
in NAND to try to take out the thumb-drive
market-place so they are going to go after the low-end.
So companies like Samsung and Toshiba, Toshiba
just renamed the company, I can't remember
the name of the company but
Micron and the NAND flash NAND manufacturers
are going to have to now go use their capacity
and go after the enterprise because China
fab is going to crush the low-end and bomb the low-end pricing.
Somebody else told me about a third of
flash consumption is in China now.
So interesting things going on there.
So near term, flash array C is not going to just
crush spinning disk and hybrid, it's going to
get closer and it's going to slowly eat away at that
as NAND prices come down it really could more
rapidly eat away at that.
So I just learned some other stuff too
but I'll take a breath.
(laughter)
>> So one of the things I think we are resounding
with it we heard not just yesterday on the
program day but even last night
at the executive event we were at
is that from this
large financial services company that you mentioned,
Pure storage is a strategic
partner to many organizations from small
to large that is incredibly valued to your point
the Shuttleman only goes to maybe a couple of
events a year and this is one of them?
>> Dave: Right.
>> This is a company that in its first 10 years
has embraced competition head on and I loved
how you talked about yesterday 10 years ago
they just drove a truck through EMC's market
and sort of ripping and replacing.
They're bold but they're also doing it in a way
that's very methodical.
They're working on bringing you know changing
companies' perspectives of even backup data
as becoming an asset to put it on flash.
Because if you can't rapidly restore that,
if there's an outage whether it is
an attack or it's unintentional human
related, that data can't be recovered quickly,
you're in a
big big problem.
And so them as a strategic component of this isn't
in any industry I think it was a very
resounding sentiment that I heard and felt yesterday.
>> Yeah, this ties into tam expansion of what we
talked to Charlie Giancarlo about
new workloads with AI as an example
flash or AC lowering prices will open up
those some of those new workloads
data protection backup is clearly an opportunity
and I think it's interesting, you're seeing
a lot of companies now announce a lot of
vendors announce flash based recovery systems
I'll call them recovery systems because
I don't even consider them backup anymore
it's not about backup, it's about recovery.
Oracle was actually one of the first
to use that kind of concept
with the zero data loss recovery appliance
they call it recovery.
So it's all about fast and
near instantaneous recovery.
Why is that important?
It's because it's companies move toward
a digital transformation and what does that mean?
And what is a digital business?
Digital business is all about how you use data
and leveraging data in new ways to
create new value to monetise or cut cost.
And so
being able to have access to that data and
recover from any inaccess to that data
in a split-second is crucial.
So Pure can participate in that, now Pure's not alone
You know, it's no coincidence that Veritas and Veeam
and Cohesity and Rubrik
they work with Pure, they work with HPE.
They work with a lot of the big players and so
but so Pure has to
you know, has some work to do to win its fair share.
Staying on backup for a moment, you know it's interesting
to see, behind us, Veritas and Veeam have the biggest
sort of presence here.
Rubrik has a presence here.
I'm sure Cohesity is here
maybe someway, somehow
but I haven't seen them
>> I haven't either.
>> Maybe they're not here.
I'll have to check that up, but
you know Veeam is actually doing very well
particularly with lower ASPs
we know that about Veeam.
They've always come at it from the mid-market and SMB.
Whereas Cohesity and Rubrik
and Veritas traditionally are
coming at it from a higher-end.
Certainly Cohesity and Rubrik on higher ASPs.
Veeam's doing very well with Pure.
They're also doing very well with HPE
which is interesting.
Cohesity announced a deal with HPE recently
I don't know, about six months ago
somebody thought "Oh maybe Veeaam's on the outs."
No, Veeam's doing very well with HPE.
It's different parts of the organization.
One works with the server group,
one works with the storage group
and both companies are actually doing quite well
I actually think Veeam is ahead of the curve
'cause they've been working with HPE for quite some time
and they're doing very well in the Pure base.
By partnering with companies,
Pure is able to enter that market
much in the same way that NetApp did in the early days.
They have a very tight relationship
for example with Commvault.
So, the other thing I was talking to
Keith Townsend last night
totally not secretor but he's talking about Outpost
and how Amazon is going to be challenged to service Outpost
Outpost is the on-prem
Amazon stack, that VMware and Amazon announced
that they're co-marketing.
So who is going to service outpost?
It's not going to be Amazon, that's not their game
in professional service.
It's going to have to be the ecosystem,
the large SIs or the Vars
the partners, VMware partners
'cause that's not Vmwares play either.
So Keith Townsend's premise,
I'd love to have him on The Cube to talk about this,
is they're going to have trouble scaling Outpost
because of that service issue.
Believe it or not when we come to these conferences,
we talk about other things than just, Pure.
There's a lot of stuff going on.
New Relic is happening this week.
Oracle open world is going on this week.
John Furrier just got back from AWS Bahrain,
and of course we're here at Pure Accelerate.
>> We are and this is our second day
of two days of coverage.
We've got Coz on next
who I think has never been on The Cube.
>> Dave: Not to my knowledge.
>> We've got Kix on later.
A great lineup, more customers
Rob Lee is going to be on.
So we're going to be digging more into Pure's Cloud strategy,
the next ten years,
how they're going to accelerate that
and pack it into the next couple of years.
>> I'll tell you one of the things I want to do, Lisa.
I'll just call it out.
An individual from Dell EMC wrote a blog
ahead of Pure Accelerate
I think it was last week, about four or five days ago
and this individual called out like
one, two, three, four.... five things
that we should ask Pure
so we should ask them, we should ask Coz
we should ask Kix.
There was criticism, of course they're biased.
These guys they always fight.
>> Lisa: Naturally.
>> They have these internecine wars.
>> Lisa: Yep.
>> Sometimes I like to call them...
no I won't say it.
So scale out, question mark there
we want to ask Coz about that and Kix.
Pure uses proprietary flash modules.
They do that because it allows them to do things
that you can't do with off-the-shelf flash.
I want to ask and challenge them that.
I want to ask about their philosophy on tiering.
They don't really believe in tiering,
why not?
I want to understand that better.
They've made some acquisitions,
Compuverde is one acquisition, it's a file system.
What does that mean for flash play?
>> Now we didn't hear anything about that yesterday,
so that's a good point that we should dig into that.
>> Yeah, so we'll bring that up.
And then the Evergreen
competitors hate Evergreen because Pure was first with it
they caught everybody off guard.
I said it yesterday, competitors hate Evergreen
because competitors live off of maintenance
and if you're not on their maintenance
they just keep jacking up the maintenance prices
and if you don't move to the new system,
maintenance just keeps getting
more and more and more and more expensive
and so they force you, you're locked in.
Force you to move.
Pure introduced this different model.
You pay for the CapEx up front
and then, you know, after three years
you get a controller swap.
You know, so...
>> To your point competitors hate it, customers love it.
We heard a lot about that yesterday,
we've got a couple more customers on
our packed program today, Dave
so let's get right to it!
>> Great.
>> Let's wrap up so we can get Coz on stage.
>> Dave: Alright, awesome.
>> Alright, for Dave Vellante.
I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching The Cube
from Pure Accelerate 2019, day two.
Stick around 'Coz' John Colgrove,
CTO, founder of Pure, will be on next.
(upbeat music)