Blasting the image of computing storage as old and antiquated, Pure Storage Inc. sent a vibrant message out during this week’s Pure//Accelerate event in Austin, Texas. More than the bright orange décor that threatened to outshine the Texas sun, the company proved itself to be a bright spot in an otherwise flat storage market.

“Pure’s the only [storage company] that’s showing any substantive growth, and my premise is, they’re doing that by having a superior product and business model, and they’re stealing share,” said Dave Vellante, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during theCUBE’s day two wrap up at the Pure//Accelerate event.

Joining Vellante to discuss the themes and trends from the show were theCUBE co-host Lisa Martin and guest host Justin Warren, chief analyst at Pivot Nine Pty Ltd. (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Takeaways: growth and product differentiation

“Pure is going for growth,” Vellante said, quoting the company’s predicted $1.7 billion sales for the current financial year and 79% gross margins. “Doubling down on growth is a smart strategy. The market’s rewarding growth right now.”

Another area Pure stands out from the crowd is product innovation. “I think it’s pretty clear that their products are differentiated from the big portfolio companies,” Vellante said.

Products announced during Pure//Accelerate included FlashArray//C, which introduced API automation and predictive support, at a cost competitive to hybrid storage. “They’re embracing the cloud, which is kind of interesting and …  really cool from an engineering standpoint,” he said.

Flash Array//C is Pure’s latest offering. But technological differentiation began a few years ago when the company first designed an application specific integrated circuit to go in front of the flash, according to Warren. This created a layer above the flash that could be accessed from within the software.

“So that gives them a performance advantage because you don’t have a whole bunch of software translation going on to get into the flash,” Warren stated. It also meant that “they could then change flash foundry without changing the experience of all the software developers up the stack inside their array,” he added.

The benefits of this were greater flexibility, simplified product releases and lower costs. “Building that into your product so that it then provides you with business options as a technology, that’s a really impressive way of thinking about how all the different pieces of your company have to interact with each other,” Warren said. “It’s not just about the technology. It’s about the business and the technology working hand in hand.”

Cloud versus on-prem: The fight continues

“People have realized that multicloud is a thing,” Warren said.

This means that chief information officers are now making the case for keeping some workloads on-premises, which in turn benefits Pure. “We should be looking at some of these on-site products like Pure so that we can go and put storage arrays in a data center,” Warren stated.

While acknowledging that Warren’s statement is indicative of the general consensus of the information technology community, Vellante made the case for public cloud. “I feel like [Amazon Web Service’s chief executive officer Andy] Jassy would say, ‘We still believe that the vast majority of workloads are going to land in the public cloud,’ [and] I’m not sure he’s wrong,” Vellante said.

“That may be true, but on what time horizon?” Warren asked. “Enterprises take a long time to change. So, there’s plenty of room for Pure to grow while that change is going on. Even if it does go all in on cloud, it’s going to take a long time to get there, and Pure can make plenty of money in the meantime.”

Here’s the complete analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Pure//Accelerate. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Pure//Accelerate event. Neither Pure Storage Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE