Pure Storage leading all-flash market

Bae Sung-ho, country manager of Pure Storage Korea, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times. / Courtesy of Pure Storage Korea

Startup shows 'real' futuristic tech

By Kang Seung-woo

When consumers choose milk in grocery stores, it is a no-brainer to pick up one with a longer shelf life.

That is the same principle that Bae Sung-ho, country manager of Pure Storage Korea, believes companies should adopt in the selection of their storage solutions between leading-edge technology and old storage infrastructure.

“The established storage architecture using hard disk drives (HDD) has been around for 30 years, but an all-flash storage system is a new technology that will last for 30 years,” Bae said.

“Purchasing the fresher product will help develop buyers’ IT infrastructure and eventually their businesses.”

Pure Storage is a California-based company specializing in all-flash solid-storage systems that contains multiple NAND flash memories that do not require electricity to retain data.

In addition, it is the company to pioneer the all-flash storage category and the first to market with an enterprise-class all-flash storage system.

The Korean branch was set up in 2013.

There are three divisions in the enterprise storage market: all-flash storage, HDD storage and hybrid storage ― a blend of flash-based solid-state disk and mechanical disk drives for an affordable price that is also called “retrofit.”

All-flash storage boasts an ultra-high performance and storage efficiency, but its higher price had prevented it from gaining traction in the market.

However, since its founding in 2009, Pure Storage has emerged as a game changer in the sector with its advanced yet cheaper technologies helping all-flash storage compete with the traditional hard drive storage.

“Our all-flash storage uses data deduplication and compression to make it cost-effective,” Bae said.

Since taking office in February, Bae and his company are concentrating their efforts on distinguishing Pure Storage from other vendors.

“Recently, rival companies are following us, calling themselves all-flash players -- although they are not,” he said.

Bae likened the storage market to the automotive sector, saying HDD storage is like a gasoline car, while the hybrid storage is a hybrid one.

“All-flash storage is equal to an electric car like a Tesla,” he said.

“The rival vendors’ claims are like selling a hybrid car to those who want to buy an electric car with misleading information.”

Despite its short history, the company has gained high recognition in the storage industry.

According to market research firm Gartner, Pure Storage has been named a leader in its Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays for the third straight year from 2014 to 2016.

“Gartner gave high marks to our completeness of vision and ability to execute,” Bae said.

He attributed the achievement to the company’s massive investment in research and development (R&D).

“Given the total number of employees, we may be a small-sized firm, but when it comes to R&D staff, we have more than 1,000 people, helping the company have a deep pool of resources,” Bae said.

He added that established storage companies have merged all-flash startup players, but they are reluctant to spend additional money on improving it and rather depend on the retrofit system.

In Korea, the storage company has gained presence as it has more than 100 customers, including Samsung, LG and SK, and globally, it has more than 3,000, including the World Bank, Philips and Domino’s.

In addition, the company earned 83.5 points in the Satmetrix Certified Net Promoter Score last year. It gauges the loyalty of a company’s customer relationships with a single question: “How likely is it that you would recommend this brand to a friend or colleague?”

“The score is the industry best, which is far higher than those of storage vendors. And it is also higher than those of popular consumer technology brands and products such as Tesla at 81 and the Apple iPhone at 63,” Bae said.

With the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming the centerpiece and Pure Storage has set its sights on it.

“AI requires increasing levels of performance and reliability and our storage capabilities can meet its demand, so we think our products are marketable,” he said.

In that respect, Bae is set to step up efforts to show that it is the real all-flash storage company, explaining what types of features an all-flash storage company should have.

“When I see consumers who mistake retrofit storages for all-flash storage and purchase them, it is regrettable,” he said. “To help consumers buy all-flash storage, there should be a precise concept of it in the market.”