INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Data Centres
Forever Flash programme
Pure Storage has called for an end to the industry ’ s longstanding practice of maintenance extortion with its expanded Forever Flash programme . The improved Forever Flash programme extends the useable life of all Pure Storage FlashArrays indefinitely , for both new and existing customers with current maintenance contracts . This includes consistently flat or better maintenance and service pricing with no out year increases ; free controller upgrades with every three year maintenance and service contract renewal to ensure storage investments benefit from Moore ’ s Law , delivering consistent performance advantages and the latest software features ; and no-cost proactive replacement of equivalent or better hardware components when needed , including flash in the event of wear .
Customers are getting a raw deal today from big storage vendors . Dramatic escalation in out-year maintenance fees are used to force them into purchasing replacement storage arrays that require moving equipment in and out of their data center every few years , and necessitate complex data migrations and costly downtime . In many cases customers have to repurchase the same array software they just wrote off . Pure Storage is committed to better serving its customers by offering storage that lives productively forever , without compromises , forced migrations or price hikes . Pure Storage is moving customers from legacy disk era business practices with the introduction of perpetual storage .
Forever Flash turns the prevailing storage industry business model on its head . Pure Storage is now expanding the advantages of Forever Flash . All of the programme ’ s benefits are now fully extended to every FlashArray customer . Total cost of ownership is further reduced , and maintenance has been permanently flattened and simplified in all array usage scenarios .
The new Forever Flash programme is comprised of three components :
# 1 Flat and fair , forever This offers guaranteed flat or better maintenance and service pricing rates forever . Customers will never be subjected to increased out year maintenance fees , and will typically see a reduction in per TB maintenance rates over time . When a customer ’ s maintenance renewal is processed , any maintenance and service contracts arising from new capacity upgrades will be consolidated into a single , simple contract , just as if they had purchased a new array , with the same maintenance and service rate they received at the time of their original , or better .
# 2 Forever maintenance This ensures proactive repair or replacement of any hardware components when needed , including flash devices , with components of equal or greater functionality for customers with active maintenance and support contracts .
# 3 Free every three year controller upgrades , forever In addition to Flat and fair maintenance pricing and Forever maintenance , every customer also receives free controller upgrades with every three year maintenance contract renewal . Customers can now keep their storage current in performance , scale and features , without complexity , risk , inconvenience or costs associated with traditional storage migrations and forklift upgrades .
The prevailing enterprise storage business model of planned obsolescence continues to force customers to either pay for new storage they may not need , or face hefty year three and four maintenance penalties , ensuring vendors continue to profit while customers get squeezed .
Revised Evergreen Storage model
The new Capacity Consolidation programme helps customers expanding their storage capacity to simultaneously consolidate older , less dense flash storage and receive trade-in credit for that older storage . This means customers can break free of the cycle of constantly re-buying storage they already own during upgrades . Additionally , with the new Right-Size Guarantee , customers can bypass the risk and guesswork of buying storage with data reduction and instead purchase directly on an effective capacity basis , just as their requirements indicate .
Pure Storage uses cloud-based workload intelligence to size the right array for the job . This eliminates worries about data reduction and undersizing for unique data , even if it is nonreducible . Pure will size an efficient array and guarantee the effective capacity result – backed by a six-month written guarantee to make it right with non-disruptive , free additional flash to meet the customer ’ s specified needs .
With Capacity Consolidation , Pure Storage customers can rest assured that their infrastructure can scale to handle exploding data growth by periodically upgrading to denser , more modern flash without paying for the same terabyte twice . Compared to traditional solutions , Capacity Consolidation eliminates periodic and disruptive capacity re-buys by expanding and modernising the media in an existing array , online and with trade-in credit .
Capacity Consolidation eliminates scale-up forklift re-buys , and scale-out re-buys associated with aging nodes removed from their cluster . Customers install new capacity into their FlashArray , while the data on the older , consolidated capacity is automatically and non-disruptively migrated into the newer , denser capacity .
Evergreen Storage can deliver significant and ongoing savings of 33 % or more , even assuming the same initial purchase price for competitive arrays – which can accelerate innovation across customer organisations . The underlying technology feature is called Shelf Evacuation , and is another example of how Evergreen Storage combines purpose-built technology and business model innovation to deliver much simpler , easier , and more cost efficient storage .
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