Pure Storage Executive Michelle Graff Recognized as one of CRN’s 2014 Channel Chiefs

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – February 27, 2014 — Pure Storage, the all-flash enterprise storage array company, today announced that Michelle Graff, director of worldwide channel programs and marketing, was named one of CRN’s 2014 Channel Chiefs. CRN’s Channel Chiefs is a prestigious list of the most powerful leaders in the IT channel. The list recognizes those directly responsible for driving channel sales and growth within their organisation, while evangelizing the importance of the channel throughout the entire IT Industry.

CRN Channel Chiefs were selected by the CRN editorial team based on channel experience, program innovations, channel-driven revenue, and public support for the importance of IT channel sales.

“P3 (Pure Storage Partner Program) represents more than 200 worldwide value add solutions, Cloud/MSPs and distribution providers who have partnered with Pure Storage to help end-users realize their ‘Flash Advantage’ such as efficiency and simplicity by transforming spinning disk environments to an all flash enterprise,” said Graff. “P3 embodies thousands of Pure Storage accredited sales and technical specialists who are proficient at evangelizing, selling and delivering Pure Storage FlashArray(s), enabling the rapid market adoption of the all-flash enterprise.”

Pure invests significantly in partner enablement and has deployed a world class channel program (P3) to ensure partners are fully equipped with the training, marketing, demo gear, sales tools, services and support required to maximise their productivity and profit.

“The channel is simply part of the DNA at Pure Storage and critical to the 100 percent channel business we are building, where 40 percent is actually sourced by our partners. We’re finding that our partners are as addicted to the advantages flash provides its end-users as we are when it comes to transforming enterprise storage after 30 years of the same old spinning disks and tape. Plus, with Forever Flash, P3 partners benefit from the most transparent storage sale on the market today,” added Graff.

“We are pleased to highlight the many executives throughout the industry who work tirelessly to advance the standing of the channel community within their organisations. The CRN Channel Chief honorees lead, inspire and engage peers and serve as valuable advocates to help ensure the health and longevity of the channel within the IT industry. We applaud their efforts and look forward to their continued success,” said Robert Faletra, CEO, The Channel Company.

Graff has more than 15 years of experience in enterprise channel marketing, sales and business development. Prior to joining Pure, she worked at Palo Alto Networks, Symantec and mValent, a company acquired by Oracle in 2009.

To learn more about becoming a Pure Storage channel partner call (800) 379-7873 or visit: https://www.purestorage.com.

The 2014 Channel Chiefs list is featured in the February/March issue of CRN, and online at https://www.crn.com/channel-chiefs/cc2014.htm.

About Pure Storage

Pure Storage, the all-flash enterprise storage company, enables the broad deployment of flash in the data center. When compared to traditional disk-centric arrays, the Pure Storage FlashArray is 10x faster and 10x more space and power efficient, for less than the cost of mechanical disk per gigabyte stored. FlashArray was purpose-built to uniquely deliver the benefits of flash together with inline data reduction, deduplication and compression to optimise storage utilization, performance and cost-savings for a variety of enterprise workloads, including server virtualisation, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), database (OLTP, real-time analytics), and cloud computing. For more information, visit www.purestorage.com.

About The Channel Company

The Channel Company is the channel community's trusted authority for growth and innovation, with established brands including CRN, XChange Events, IPED, and SharedVue. For more than three decades, we have leveraged our proven and leading-edge platforms to deliver prescriptive sales and marketing solutions for the technology channel. The Channel Company provides Communication, Recruitment, Engagement, Enablement, Demand Generation and Intelligence services to drive technology partnerships. Learn more at www.thechannelcompany.com.

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The Pure Storage and “P” logo marks, Purity Operating Environment, and RAID-3D are trademarks of Pure Storage, Inc. All other trademarks or names referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners.

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Press Contacts

Amy Cronk, Director of Communications, 
Pure Storage
amycronk@purestorage.com
+1-650-468-4724