Expensive upgrades have long plagued storage solutions. To get around the problem, Santa Clara, California-based Pure Storage offers consumers enterprise data flash storage solutions that “cost less, perform better and are easy to manage”. In an interview, John Colgrove, founder & chief visionary officer, Pure Storage, told Sudhir Chowdhary that the only reason people buy hard drives is they are cheaper than flash. In a year or two, the market will get to a point where flash will be cheaper, even in terms of the acquisition cost. Excerpts from the interview:
How crucial is data storage when it comes to IT spending by businesses?
Everything in IT revolves around data —whether it’s your customer data telemetry, data security cameras. I would argue that data storage is the most important part. There’s no point in having graphics processing units (GPUs) to process your learnings when you don’t have the data to feed them. You also know that if you can’t contact your customers because you don’t have the customer data, you’re not going to be in business. Therefore, data is at the heart of everything.
Has the field of data storage and management started seeing the effects of AI deployment?
The stage of AI we are seeing right now are training models like ChatGPT which are trained by thousands of GPUs over months. But the bigger change is going to come over the next few years with regard to using the results of the training, using the inferences that come from the training to drive business and applications. A lot of businesses today share their old data which is stored on hard drives because of its low cost. But it is a challenge to use that data because the hard drives are so slow. So, companies will see value in accessing the data when they have AI inferences to apply. AI is going to drive an increased requirement for broad data access and the desire to store ever more data.
What is Pure Storage doing to address consumers’ need for a strong data management solution?
We are doing that in two ways. One, we’re continuing to drive what I would call the densest, most efficient storage on the planet with models that generate much less e-waste and consume less power and space compared to hard drives or other flash modules. We are going to ship the 150-terabyte module by the end of 2024 which offers twice as much storage. This would make organisations more efficient, and help manage data explosion. Two, today people manage our boxes one at a time. We have a new initiative, Pure Fusion that is designed to let a large group of our boxes be managed like a single cloud service. This approach extends the simplicity of cloud operations to on-premises data centres and fleets, optimising management, density, and power efficiency. These advancements strategically address the challenges posed by the exponential growth of data.
Where does the India centre fit in in your global R&D set-up?
We have five R&D centres in three regions: North America — Santa Clara, CA; Bellevue, WA and Vancouver, Canada; Europe — Prague; Asia — Bangalore. I expect we’re going to maintain that triumvirate for a while. I don’t see us opening any new R&D centres soon. Our focus on our centres is to have top quality work which is intellectually stimulating and can attract top talent.The Bangalore centre is where we do all our Network File System (NFS) work, which forms a key part of our global product roadmap.
What will it take for India to become Pure Storage most successful market?
India is a large economy and it’s one of the fastest growing markets. We see a lot of opportunity in the market despite being a newer company compared to our competitors. We need to identify some lighthouse accounts which will turn India into our larger and more successful market. By building our own flash, we offer efficiency and consistency in performance. Direct flash modules have fewer components so there are fewer racks, less power cords, less network connections, less cooling fans and fewer parts. Greater simplicity means less e-waste and less cost. This eventually leads to a lesser generation of e-waste. As per the Pure Storage ESG Report 2023, our storage uses much less energy and reduces power generation related emissions for our customers by upto 85%. Our solutions are able to boost capacity, reduce costs and optimise space and energy consumption. “AI is going to increase the requirement for broad data access and therefore the need to store ever more data,” Colgrove, concluded.
