Pure Storage Powers Next Generation of AI Ready Infrastructure Through Partner Excellence

Pure Storage’s Director of Distribution and Alliances, Middle East, Turkey & Africa, Samer Semaan discusses channel strategy, partner program updates, and market trends, emphasizing AI infrastructure, sustainability, and the shift toward managed services.

Can you please discuss Pure’s channel strategy for the next 12-18 months – what are some of the key focus areas for the company?

We will maintain a laser focus on jointly meeting our customer’s needs and will continue focusing our investment on existing partners who are loyal and have a growth mindset. Additionally, we will continue to be a 100% channel focused company.

Across the region, we’re seeing customers looking to invest in infrastructure to support their AI initiatives. In parallel, customers are determined to reduce the carbon footprint of their tech stack. By leveraging Pure’s storage-as-a-Service offering, Evergreen//One, partners will be uniquely positioned to meet these two pressing customer needs. Customers will have the ability to be flexible in how much and how long they consume infrastructure for, plus Pure Storage’s infrastructure is much more energy efficient. For partners, this means benefiting from increased ARR, the ability to grow share of wallet and offering more energy efficient technology. By focusing on these priorities, we can strengthen our partnerships and drive mutual success in the years ahead.

Can you please provide an overview of some of the recent updates to the Pure Storage partner program?

This year we announced several updates to the Pure Storage Partner Program including new incentives, billing automation, and intelligent visibility into customer assets to support predictable recurring revenue streams in today’s services-driven economy.

These capabilities will help partners drive greater operational efficiency and improve the overall customer experience. Pure Storage partners will benefit from the following enhancements:

AI-powered asset management: Through the Pure1 Assets dashboard, partners benefit from uninterrupted service and clear cost analysis during renewal periods with smart workflows. With industry-leading visibility into expiring subscriptions and AI-based recommendations, partners can turn renewals into planning and growth conversations for increased revenue while discovering new IT projects.

Digital master services agreement: Pure gives partners the ability to opt-in to a new self-service purchasing model which enables customers to subscribe to additional Evergreen//One services within Pure1. The new model includes partner margin and full account visibility for partners to track revenue growth.

Expanded partner intelligence: Further expanding on existing partner intelligence capabilities, partners gain new strategic insights, including account-specific KPIs, trends, and directed growth opportunities, and platform performance analysis to expose upsell opportunities and improve the customer experience.

Simplified invoice management: Pure’s Partner Invoice Management provides self-service invoice reporting, APIs, and an actionable dashboard so reconciliation time is significantly reduced or eliminated.

What differentiates Pure from other storage vendors?

As enterprises further embrace AI to drive innovation, streamline operations, and gain a competitive edge, traditional storage infrastructure fails to meet the performance, scalability and energy-efficiency requirements needed. In fact, according to a recent survey that Pure Storage conducted, 98% of CIOS & IT decision makers state that their IT infrastructure requires urgent improvements in order to create the necessary conditions for AI success. 81% believe that AI-generated data is likely to outgrow their organisation’s current data centers, emphasising the need for a robust, high-performance, efficient and cyber-resilient AI infrastructure.

Customers today also face challenges around ease of management and automation of disparate systems. While competitors look to address these issues by offering a potpourri of disparate products — consisting of different operating systems, APIs and management — Pure Storage offers a single, consolidated, consistent, and highly orchestrated platform that delivers more than 10x the reliability at less than one half the power, space, cooling and labour of competitive solutions.

Finally, based on what you are seeing in the market, can you highlight a couple of key trends that are impacting your channel?

One of the big trends we are seeing in the region, particularly among traditional resellers, is the shift to a more hybrid model, where Managed Services is becoming a bigger part of their value proposition. It’s no secret that organizations have been steadily shifting their IT consumption preferences to favor subscription-based models to take advantage of all the benefits of a cloud-operating model. At the same time, whether it be because of budgets, or the talent crunch, many organizations are facing resource constraints. The combination of these two factors, in particular, has led many organizations to outsource their infrastructure to MSPs – everything from cybersecurity to their storage and backup. As-a-Service solutions backed by SLAs are going to continue to grow as partners and customers want guarantees and peace of mind.