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As we kick off Q2, it’s clear that the last few months have been a special time for Pure Storage®. Our Q4 FY22 and Q1 FY23 results validate our belief that this is Pure’s decade. We’re delighting our customers with modern, innovative solutions that help them maximize their most important asset—their data. Our NPS score has never been better: 85.2. And, we’re continuously taking market share from our competitors. 

It was also a special time for both of us personally as we stepped into new roles. Seb Darrington was appointed EMEA VP Systems Engineering, and Nicolas Leblanc was appointed VP Sales, EMEA. 

Here are some highlights from the last quarter and a few things we’ve learned.

Meeting Our Customers and Partners Face-to-Face  

Written by Seb Darrington and Nicolas Leblanc

The most remarkable change in the last few months has been the gradual reopening of the world with face-to-face meetings making a much-needed return. Our biggest highlight during this time is meeting customers and partners in-person again. To be able to sit across the table and discuss their challenges, their needs, and how Pure’s technology helps address their most pressing issues has been inspiring. 

In the same vein, meeting our distributed team across the region has helped us to fully immerse ourselves in the different business cultures, unique environments, and specific needs of various countries. Increased face-to-face interactions enable a better understanding of customer and partner requirements, improved collaboration, and more knowledge sharing—leading to faster innovation and resolution of complications.     

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[Photos from Tour de France event, April 2022, Paris]

What’s Driving Customers: Security, ESG, and the Subscription Economy 

Security concerns and ransomware attacks have dominated almost every customer conversation. Every day, customers tell us about the increasing risk and their concerns around recovering their data if they’re hit. It’s inspiring to see customers leverage our modern data protection solutions, whether it’s SafeModeTM snapshots or the ability to rapidly restore huge volumes of data fast and at scale. Now, with Auto-on SafeMode, protection is on by default, which means customer data will be automatically protected. Customers such as furniture manufacturer USM, Czech bank Česká spořitelna, and German organic food supplier Weiling are all taking advantage of Pure technology to boost their security postures.   

The ubiquity of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is an interesting change. It’s been fascinating to see how customers are embracing it—not only as a discussion point but also in their RFPs. It’s heartening to see Pure yet again leading the charge. 

Our technology enables customers to drive out direct carbon usage in their data storage systems by up to 80%. What sets us apart from other vendors is that sustainability is built into our solutions. How? Our highly engineered, built-for-flash software, combined with DirectFlash® technology, always-on data reduction, performance and simplicity, and unique EvergreenTM architecture, reduces power, space, and cooling required to run a data center. And our products are built to last and help further reduce waste—more than 97% of the arrays we’ve deployed that are + 5 years old are still in service.

Customers such as UK mapping organization Ordnance Survey and the Swiss high-tech office building Millennium are delighted by the quick progress they’re making on their environmental goals.  

When customers are planning for the future, we hear them talking about cloud-like strategies  that enable flexibility in their infrastructure—however they choose to deploy them. This flexible approach, coupled with Pure as-a-Service™, continues to help differentiate us. Pure as-a-Service is about much more than financials. It’s about the services that support customers to innovate and grow. Service level agreements (SLAs) should be truly flexible and enable customers with choice and cloud-like consumption models.

Pure as-a-Service helps customers match their infrastructure with their business requirements and scale as needed. The 35% YoY subscription services growth rate announced in our Q1 earnings is a solid indication of how many customers are embracing this approach. Customers such as UAE cloud services provider Taeknizon, network provider WOBCOM, and managed services provider Options Technology are some of the many organizations already seeing the benefits of Pure as-a-Service. 

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External Recognition 

It’s wonderful when we hear positive feedback from customers directly, but it’s also a powerful endorsement of Pure’s portfolio when we’re nominated for and win awards. We’re proud to have been named Storage Innovator of the Year at the Dutch IT-channel Awards and nominated for an Computing AI & Machine Learning Award. Pure has also been shortlisted for the Network Computing Awards, the Storage Awards, and the CRN Women of the Channel Awards. Some of these awards are publicly voted for, so please cast your vote for us!
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The Path to Growth 

The last three months have been very enlightening as we listen to our customers, partners, and teams. We’re confident that with our powerful portfolio, 100% channel-centric approach, and dedicated teams, we’ll continue to delight our customers and progressively earn market share. Our aim is to continue to build on our success and never get complacent.

We’re looking forward to an incredibly exciting year ahead for Pure in EMEA!    

Mike Fitzgerald, Nicolas Leblanc, and Hugues Heuze

[Caption: Dan Fitzsimons, Nicolas Leblanc, and Hugues Heuze.]