At the pace that Pure Storage Inc. is rolling out new coding platforms and data services initiatives, the 12-year-old all-flash array pioneer might soon want to consider dropping “storage” from its logo. Pure is looking more like an IT infrastructure services delivery business, based in particular on a recent set of announcements in late September.

The company launched Pure Fusion as a platform with a SaaS management plane to pool storage arrays in cloudlike zones. Fusion leverages a storage-as-code model using an API framework to integrate developer tools and accelerate provisioning.

Pure also introduced Portworx Data Services, a database-as-a-service platform that supports Kubernetes automation management. DevOps engineers can select from a wide range of options for deployment of data services, including SQL and NoSQL.

“At the end of the day, we deliver storage, but what our customers are looking for and what they value and care about is their data,” said Rob Lee (pictured, left), chief technology officer of Pure Storage. “How do we connect with the data that’s sitting on our storage more quickly and get it in the hands of developers and the applications more seamlessly and more fluidly across different environments? What we’re doing with these announcements is extending our reach, helping customers work with their data a couple of more steps down the road beyond just serving the bits and bytes of storage.”

Lee spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Pure//Launch event. Scott Sinclair (pictured, right), senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, spoke with theCUBE co-host John Walls in a separate interview. They discussed a new tool for monitoring the container stack, tackling the operational demands for customers, IT’s growing role in driving business, and a quest for simplicity. (* Disclosure below.)

Visibility in the tech stack

Along with the announcements surrounding Pure Fusion and Portworx, the company also updated a previous offering, the Pure 1 Meta monitoring tool, which is designed to make it easier for IT administrators to track the health of container infrastructure driven by Portworx.

“That’s all about how we create more visibility, connecting the monitoring and management of infrastructure running the apps and bring those closer together,” Lee explained. “The visibility we’re now able to deliver for Portworx topologies is allowing developers and DevOps teams to look at the entre tech stack of a container environment. You can see everything that’s going on and the root cause of any problems that may come up.”

Pure’s latest moves mirror the transformation taking place in IT as a whole, as enterprises increasingly embrace multicloud, hybrid cloud, and as-a-service models. In 2016, the company launched a flexible consumption option for block storage, called Evergreen, and rebranded it in 2019 under its Pure-as-a-Service offering.

Pure is tackling the needs of its customers for infrastructure modernization by addressing the operational demands and an ability to service data.

“These announcements are about tackling that operations piece, bringing infrastructure code and applications more closely together,” Lee said. “If you want to do bleeding-edge things with data, you’re not going to do it on decades-old infrastructure. We’ve been on a long-term journey to continue to help customers modernize how they work with data, the results they are able to drive from data.”

IT drives the business

Pure’s strategy aligns with what analysts are seeing in the IT industry as well. The old narrative for IT was that it drove availability and resiliency, making sure the lights stayed on and the business didn’t go down. While that role hasn’t changed, IT has taken on a new charter, one driven by a need to accelerate operations and contribute directly to the success of the enterprise.

“Data is part of the revenue chain for a majority of organizations, according to what we are seeing in our research,” Sinclair noted. “More than half of businesses are identifying some portion of their revenue as coming from digital products or digital services. IT for most businesses is not just an enabler anymore; IT is in the driver’s seat.”

However, the process of driving a car can be complicated, with rapidly changing situations and unexpected events. Pure seeks to differentiate itself through an ease-of-use philosophy, providing products and services that are designed to make the experience with apps, operations and data infinitely less complex.

“From the outside, everyone talks about ease of use and making things simpler for IT, but Pure has made that almost core as part of their product design and a part of their culture,” Sinclair said. “If you look at the announcements, they are trying to expand that culture, that DNA around ease of use or simplicity. ‘How do we make the larger IT operations journey simpler?’ That’s part of where Pure is going.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Pure//Launch event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Pure//Launch 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