The story of Pure Storage Inc. is not merely one of flash memory, but also a story of significant progress in the storage industry.

The company celebrated its first decade of existence this month and has already broken new ground by being the first all-flash array business to achieve escape velocity. Pure orchestrated its success through a combination of savvy partnerships, a significant investment in research and development, and a realization that its customers would embrace an innovative storage model that could support the software application world.

Yet, what is also driving Pure’s rise is basic economics. The storage industry has moved from spinning disks in mechanical metal enclosures to a more software-oriented model fueled by the speed, efficiency and lower prices of all-flash arrays.

Pure’s value proposition was validated recently from survey data released by Enterprise Technology Research. The results showed that Pure was leading the pack in enterprise spending momentum at the expense of Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

“We had mechanical disks in our computers literally spinning rust,” said Charlie Giancarlo (pictured), chairman and chief executive officer of Pure Storage. “It’s only been in the last decade where solid state has taken the place of that, called flash. As that continues to get less expensive, we now can bring not only flash performance into disk economics, but more importantly, we can finally have modern software that is driving the need for greater flexibility with our data.”

Giancarlo spoke with Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Pure//Accelerate event in Austin, Texas. They discussed the influence of solid-state technology on Pure’s success, an evolving hybrid cloud strategy and “application-first” focus, falling prices for flash and the firm’s continued commitment to growth (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE features Charlie Giancarlo as its Guest of the Week.

Freeing storage and applications

Pure is riding the wave of enterprise interest in applications as storage technology has evolved to a place where it can more effectively service this need. As the company fine-tuned its strategy over the past decade, application technology shifted from being tied to custom hardware stacks and operating systems.

With the maturation of the internet and the evolution of server virtualization, applications could now move from on-premises to cloud and back again. Yet, storage remained stuck, tied to the rack and constrained by slow disks that could support only one application at a time.

The game changer was solid-state, according to Giancarlo, non-volatile storage that retained persistent data in NAND-driven flash memory devices with higher capacity. Applications were freed and so was storage.

“We can make it a horizontal layer rather than tightly tied to any individual application, and that’s what the next decade is going to be about,” Giancarlo said.

Mirroring cloud for on-premises

The result has been the unveiling of Pure’s comprehensive cloud strategy. When the company announced its Cloud Data Services offering in November, it also heralded a “new chapter” where it would deliver the same Pure experience in the public cloud.

“Our cloud strategy is really quite simple,” Giancarlo explained. “We want to make the cloud and every cloud appear to an application developer to be the same as it is on-prem.”

To achieve this, Pure followed up on its November releases with announcements this month designed to provide customers with new cloud services, enhanced flash arrays, and an artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Cloud Block Store for Amazon Web Services Inc. will allow users to move applications to the cloud using Pure’s own software. The release of FlashArray//C offers reliability and affordability for two-tier data. And the AI Data Hub lets enterprises unify information for more rapid deployments of AI-generated workloads.

“Primary tier applications have been developed with on-prem interfaces and on-prem services,” Giancarlo said. “Cloud, while wonderful from the standpoint of being dynamic, does not have sophisticated services for data. By making it appear to be the same to the application and to the developer on-prem as in the cloud, it just makes the entire system more dynamic.”

Using Purity for heavy lifting

A key element for the company involved its Purity operating environment, which was designed “with API first in mind,” according to a company blog post. This is a critical piece of the hybrid cloud puzzle because cloud providers use different application programming interfaces, Giancarlo noted.

To underscore the importance of Purity’s role, one needs only to scan the headlines from its Accelerate conference last week. Recently revealed deals with Microsoft Azure and AWS rely on Purity, and Komprise Inc., Veritas Technologies LLC. and Cloudian Inc. all announced integrations with Pure’s operational platform.

“We have taken all of that heavy lifting and enabled customers to take an application they’ve already written, whether on cloud or on-prem, and move it into those other environments with much less investment,” Giancarlo said. “All of the cloud players recognize that while they have provided some great capabilities, especially for DevOps, the level of sophistication and the completion of services for things like very complex enterprise apps have not been fully accomplished yet.”

Falling prices and growth

One of the tailwinds propelling Pure is that NAND pricing has fallen off a cliff. An oversupply of the flash memory technology, which started in the second half of 2018, has led to significant price declines estimated to be approximately 40% this year.

However, when the pendulum swings back and prices rise again, it could have an impact on Pure as the company would likely absorb the increase at the expense of its margins. This doesn’t bother Giancarlo, who feels that the favorable economics have created a robust market for his business.

“The consistent and fast decrease in NAND pricing simply means that we will eventually get to solid state for all storage,” Giancarlo said. “I have no doubt about that; the days of disk are certainly numbered. What that does is open up the entire storage market.”

Before becoming CEO of Pure Storage in 2017, Giancarlo served in a number of executive roles at Cisco Systems Inc. and as senior advisor at Silver Lake Partners. In a recent interview, he confided that his true aspiration was to simply be a “ski bum.”

His company is cruising on smooth terrain right now, with a 70% gross margin in the last quarter, according to Giancarlo. At some point, he might be tempted to pull back from Pure’s aggressive growth strategy and start generating more cash, adding to the over $1.1 billion it already has on the books.

That time hasn’t arrived yet.

“We’re going to continue to focus on growth,” Giancarlo said. “Every sale we’ve made has always been a competitive sale; there’s always someone that we had to displace, some incumbent. Once growth slows down, it will all start flowing to the bottom line.”

Here’s the complete video interview, 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