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CEO Charles Giancarlo’s Keynote Address - Charles Giancarlo, Chairman and CEO, Pure

A vision for the industry, customers, and future. Charles Giancarlo, CEO and Chairman of Pure Storage, delivers his keynote Pure//Accelerate 2021 address.
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00:05
Unknown: Thank you for taking the time to be with us here at Pure Accelerate to our customers, thank you for your business. And to those of you that are not yet our customers, thank you for considering us. Our theme this year is superheroes because we know it takes superhuman strength and
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intelligence, laser focus vision to commit to and deliver a modern data infrastructure. We at Pure want to empower you to be the superhero of your organizational needs. But we're here today to provide more than speeches and swag. As the superheroes of IT. You need new tools and new capabilities to
00:44
help your team and your company move forward. At Accelerate last summer, we made a series of predictions to help make sense of what would happen under COVID rules. In early 2020, when the pandemic first took root. And while everyone was scrambling to create a work from home world, we predicted that many companies
01:05
would need to accelerate IT purchasing in Q1 to adjust to the early reality of the pandemic. We predicted at last year's Accelerate that work from home was with us for the long haul. We also knew that companies would need to take stock of the new reality and completely replan their IT
01:25
strategy, leading to a slow IT environment in Q2. We also predicted that after companies replan their IT strategy, that digital transformation would become primary for nearly all organizations, and that IT investment would increase through the second half of 2020 and into 2021. Of course, no one
01:47
could have predicted the big breakthrough in delivering effective COVID-19 vaccines by the pharmaceutical industry in October of last year. This more than anything else has created confidence that we will eventually be able to return to the lives that we suspended. That confidence has accelerated
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our economies, and we see employment returning. But of course, there's a downside to every positive and the improved economy has tightened supply chains. Thankfully, Pure's crack operations team and our strong relationships with suppliers have made sure Pure and our customers were not impacted by
02:28
these shortfalls. Pure has a long standing ability to see what's coming for our industry. And to be sure that we're ahead of the curve. At the risk of ruining a good track record. We're now predicting what what this year will look like. 2021 will be as challenging as 2020, but for different reasons.
02:49
First, while the pandemic will ease and the economy will improve, the slow return to a new work environment will be very challenging. Most companies are planning on returning to a hybrid work environment in the workplace. But what does a hybrid working environment really look like? Nobody really
03:09
knows. And it will be different for every company and different for every team and every office location in every company. The inconsistent patchwork of guidance and local restrictions will create uncertainty for companies implementing return to work plans over the next year. And there's only so much
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ambiguity that people can handle before they become less productive. Personally, I believe we need to reduce the cognitive load on how people work together so that they are able to focus on what they're doing together. The second major prediction is that most employees will choose to be back
03:49
in the office most of the time. Once a few people are back together in the office, they will experience renewed focus and greater creativity. Contrary to popular opinion, that most workplaces will stay wholly or partially virtual going forward. I believe the pendulum will swing back towards the office as
04:09
quickly as it's safe to do so. People are social animals. Young employees actually have a significant part of their social circle in the workplace and do not have convenient workspaces in their apartments. Once the majority of employees are back in the office FOMO fear of missing out will encourage
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others to come in as well. Self reports of productivity stayed very high during the pandemic. But we all know that group productivity suffered, especially on creative endeavors. Having some teams supercharged by being in the office will put more pressure on other teams to collaborate in
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person and make up for lost time. So IT will grow even more this year as people return to work and play and companies double down on digital transformation. New creativity by reunited teams will drive AI renewed economy, new vendors, new systems and new application environments will be
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on everyone's agenda. Now, let's discuss what's coming next in technology. In late 2019, Pure introduced a concept we call the modern data experience. The modern data experience is what companies experience when they benefit from the full spectrum of Pure's industry leadin technology that never grows old
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In combination with our worl leading customer experience. W continued to build on thi strategy over the last year even during COVID Pure ha delivered multiple systems an software upgrades to our flas array and flash blade produc lines. We've delivered on our a a service experience, and we'v
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expanded our product breath including cloud native workload support with port works. Whil the need for these innovation became clear several years ago the pressures of the pandemi has made them more obvious tha ever, business will increasingl be conducted online. This mean that business services need t
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be scalable and available o demand on demand application require a modern infrastructure And that means embracing a clou model for operating on prem dat storage and management, an enabling a hybrid cloud dat model. This will allow your I department to provide you business partners, both interna
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to your company, and you external vendors with the tools interfaces and API's tha developers want in order t control infrastructure an services solely with code Operations and the applicatio and data management need to b fully automated to enable you developers to maximize thei
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productivity. And this will als allow your organization t reduce costs, and to maximiz optionality between on prem an hyper scalar cloud offerings But the truly difficult part i not predicting the future. Bu actually getting there fro here. Organization stil continue to struggle with th
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complexity of existin infrastructure, legac architectures, and what ain' broke. breaking free of ol infrastructure is hard. Bu changing your old infrastructur is necessary to brin traditional and moder applications into a single unified operating model. Pure i
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working to bring block file object and container based clou native data storage an management together into single unified data managemen architecture, which spans bot private and public clouds, an makes these services availabl to your data architects an developers through API's an
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code. So that's the modern dat experience, true data service delivered and consumed as service that will power you business and allow you t innovate faster than you competitors. That's the bi idea. And we have designed i with our signature simplicity transparency and evergree
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model. We are here today tomorrow and for the next fou weeks to share with you thi vision, its roadmap, and transition plan towards a moder data experience that fits you organization. So far, all tha sounds great, and maybe kind o lofty, and unachievable if thi isn't already something you
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organization has worked on. Bu I have the incredible pleasur of giving our next custome award to a company that ha worked closely with Pure ove the last six years to implemen their modern data experience They continue to push th envelope in making world clas infrastructure support the nex
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generation of busines applications, both theirs, an quite possibly yours as well a a model for how to marry modern infrastructure wit modern applications in order t scale in a secure and cos effective way whil revolutionising their industry I'm pleased to present Pure
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s greatest of all time awa d winner to ServiceNow as t e greatest of all time, ServiceN w stands head and shoulders abo e their competition. I recent y had the pleasure of interviewi g bill where he shared some of h s philosophy on ServiceNow h s purpose to make the world f work work better for peopl
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. Let's roll the video to he r more in their own word In a world of on demand information, global commerce, real time communication and down to the second supply chains, it's impossible to estimate how many discrete workflows comprise a workday. With their now platform service now
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revolutionized how work gets done. Managing relentless digital workflows that permeate every aspect of 6900 customer enterprises. A relentless amount of data flows through the now platform. The nature of doing business in a global economy means the now platform can never hiccup. It can never hit pause,
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it can never break down. Because when that happens, work, just stops. Nobody keeps pace better than ServiceNow. Its platform encompasses workflows that span the enterprise. tracking all that data and decision making requires colossal capability, which service now ably provides partnership with Pure Storage is
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a key contributor to keeping them on the leading edge as the strategic authority for digital transformation service. Now, what seems that without fail, hour by hour, day in and day out. Congratulations to the ServiceNow team. It's a pleasure
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to collaborate with you on your journey to revolutionize the world of work. And just as we partnered with them, we're ready to partner with you as well. Here are three key steps that every company can follow to achieve a modern data experience. First, you start with your foundation, your data
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infrastructure. Ideally, you're able to simplify your storage management, even while designing your storage architecture architecture to span both private and public clouds. Investing in a modern data infrastructure lets you support both the traditional applications that are working
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for you now. And the more modern applications that your teams are developing next, post pandemic people will expect a more digital experience along with in person interactions. All activities will be enhanced by digital tools, and always on secure access to data. Post COVID. We're all digital users
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and your IT and DevOps teams expect the same kind of ease of use from you that they receive from your vendors and service providers. Pure has been at the forefront of upgrading the data environment since our founding. At that time, we predicted an all flash future for the data center. And the all flash data
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center is now not only possible, but even more cost effective than hybrid disk arrays. In the same way that you don't find a spinning disk and your mobile phone or your new home computer. There's simply no point in adding more spinning disk or tape to your organization storage. Modern spinning disk is
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just not a thing. Going all flash is not just about improving speed, reliability and efficiency. What if I said that putting in transistors instead of vacuum tubes and computers in the 60s was just about speed and reliability? Do you think I'd be missing the bigger picture. Solid State flash is required to
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create a modern data environment where you can make data services available to your developers as code leveraging all flash everywhere with Pure but you automate your entire data storage environment and enable policy based data management. It allows you to move into containerization easily and
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simply. Pure is using Kubernetes to to automate data services and enable your developers to take advantage of cloud best practices within your private cloud environment. It allows your organizations to dramatically increase the portability of your data services to standardize internal
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services to provide better, faster, more secure access to information. Your organizations will save time and money and your development teams will be independent and happy because they will be able to access fully compliant and structured data services through code. digital transformation is taking
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place whether we are ready or not. We will either enable it within our own infrastructure, or it'll overtake us. One of our goals at this accelerate is to share how Pure along with many of our customers and partners is defining the next generation of customer experience by using as a service and cloud thinking
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applied to infrastructure and services. an apt analogy is Traditional infrastructure is a lot like doing the laundry. Now, stick with me here. In traditional it, you purchase and install the most modern washers and dryers possible, and you maintain them for your development and product
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organizations. But let's face it, neither you nor your developers want to do the wash any longer. They want clean clothes to simply appear in their closets clean, folded and ready to wear. So instead of trying to install upgraded washing machines, what if you could provide them with same day
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clothing delivery at the same or lower cost as before, but faster, easier and arranged with an app. Pure as a service accomplishes this for data storage and management. It goes well beyond a simple financial model. Pure is delivering the modern aspects of data management services. Pure as a
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service provides transparent and uniform pricing on prem and in the cloud, charging only for what is used. And it also provides cloud like services to you and your developers. It provides scalable capacity and performance solely through API. It enables data across availability zones in both
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private and public clouds. And it is managed and controlled by a single integrated management console for all Pure Storage environments. Our port works product is a perfect example of the as a service model. It is offered as a service to support containerized workloads, letting these workloads operate in a
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hybrid cloud environment using Kubernetes to enable advanced data services such as disaster recovery as a service. These same kinds of services are being extended to all of our products. As service now demonstrates the demand for modern business applications are changing every aspect of how organizations
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work, and how they serve their customers. Compared to their traditional cousins, modern data applications should be based on microservices, and able to constantly change optimized to run across 1000s or even 10s of 1000s of containers, able to be widely distributed across the data center, cloud and edge and
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fully orchestrated and automated via API with minimal human interaction. They should be resilient to security threats and outages, and built to process and interpret data in real time. As just one example, Port works supports all of these capabilities.
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A truly modern infrastructure will also support traditional apps, which continue to be so critical to business operations. But how can we accomplish this in the real world? Over the next two days, we are thrilled to be bringing you the next step forward in modern data management solutions that cross
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both on prem and cloud, and traditional and cloud native environments. We will show you a single integrated control plane for all data management with the ability to dynamically adjust your data subscriptions and provide data and AP agility and portability to automate self service infrastructure with
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Kubernetes. And all of this combined under the banner of Pure1 management. We look fo ward to sharing much more ab ut this in later keynotes. I ho e that this has given you so e food for thought as you pl n for your company's it fu ure. I started with a thank yo for spending your time with us
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And I'd like to end with one as well. I want to thank ev ryone at Pure who's worked ha d to bring our modern data ex erience to life, and who have or anized weeks of training and wo kshops for you, our customers an partners during this ac elerate and beyond. All of us at Pure along with all of our pa
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tners are excited to show you wh t we've developed while wo king from home. So that you ca emerge from COVID-19 with in ovative services for your co panies and customers and ea ier transition to digital tr nsformation and the know how an partnerships that will make ea h of you a superhero in your fi
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ld. And now, back to Jason an our next presentation.
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Modern Analytics

In keeping with a longstanding Pure//Accelerate tradition of making bold predictions for the future of IT, Charles Giancarlo highlighted three imperatives businesses will have to contend with as the pandemic eases and the economy improves. First, 2021 will be as challenging as 2020, but for different reasons. The future workplace is a hybrid work environment in which employees must leverage digital tools to collaborate with peers both in and outside of the office. Contrary to popular opinion, that most workplaces will stay wholly or partially virtual going forward. Charles Giancarlo believes the pendulum will swing back towards the office as quickly as it's safe to do so.

“People are social animals. Young employees actually have a significant part of their social circle in the workplace and do not have convenient workspaces in their apartments,” says Giancarlo. Once the majority of employees are back in the office FOMO fear of missing out will encourage others to come in as well. Self-reports of productivity stayed very high during the pandemic. But often at the cost of group productivity, especially on creative endeavors. Having some teams supercharged by being in the office will put more pressure on other teams to collaborate in person and make up for lost time.

Second, creativity and collaboration will be supercharged by the return to the office. New creativity by reunited teams will drive an AI-renewed economy, placing new vendors, new systems, and new application environments on everyone’s agenda.

Third, chief among these new technology trends will be the renewed interest in cultivating a modern data experience. The pressures of the pandemic have made it more obvious than ever before how important data infrastructure is to digital transformation. Even during a pandemic, Pure has delivered multiple systems and software upgrades to our product lines. We were able to provide safe reliable data services to customers who increasingly had to shift their business operations online, thanks to a modern data infrastructure. What does our modern infrastructure solution look like? A cloud model for operating on-premises data storage which facilitates the adoption of a true hybrid cloud. Automation across applications and infrastructure.

Watch the video to learn more about what modern data infrastructure looks like in 2021.

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