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58:15 Webinar

A Recipe for Solution Success & Faster Outcomes? Product + Services + You!

Join Andrew Miller and Tom Schroeder (Pure’s VP of Professional Services) as they discuss Tom’s history of helping customers move from products to solutions throughout his career. We’ll then wander through Pure’s services catalog and how it complements both Pure’s simplicity and our channel partner first approach diving into 1) Advanced Services, 2) Installation Services, 3) Migration Services, and 4) Business Critical Services.
This webinar first aired on March 15, 2022
The first 5 minute(s) of our recorded Webinars are open; however, if you are enjoying them, we’ll ask for a little information to finish watching.
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00:00
Ok. 5432. Thank you all so much for joining us today for your March 15th coffee break, March of 2022. My name is Andrew Miller. I'm your host here at Pier. I'm joined by two folks today. As you can see,
00:15
Tom Schroeder and Scott Monaghan. I'm actually very happy to uh I think we got two for the price of one in case you were looking last month, you'll notice there's an extra picture there, Scott. Thank you for diving in the jumping in the boat with us. Um that we, we basically got two storytellers
00:28
instead of one and they're not actually getting paid extra, but don't tell them I don't get paid extra for this either. You know, if you, if you actually bail it halfway through, I think we all still get paid the same, but we're here because we enjoy it. It's fun. This as always is meant to be a time where we
00:39
explore topics that you find interesting or hopefully making them interesting for you by educating you about them and then we'll dive into ways that pure can actually help. That's gonna be the second half today. Just a little bit of logistics. As always before we get started, we do, you might have actually noticed right there. Actually, we've got a coffee break logo. Thank you,
00:58
Emily and Vina, folks in marketing who help behind the scenes with this could not do what I do without them. Sort of kind of highlight that, you know, it's still kind of clean, kind of minimal, but it's there. You'll start to see this show up as always. I know in some cases we're here for the coffee cards. There's details about that.
01:12
If you haven't gotten it yet, that's because you receive it after you attend. And there are some categories where we, we love you and appreciate you attending. We just can't send you coffee cards and, and you know, this right next, this because this is a series. We are now up to month 13, have a little bit of different things. And when we send you the follow up,
01:30
you'll see this with links to all the different topics. They're actually aging pretty well, partly because of the approach that you'll see today where we try and go and actually be more solution focused then actually, hey, here's the tech and last but not least next month, if you were here back last February JD Wallace joined me where we talked about Flash and QLC
01:49
and then Flash or AC, he's gonna join me again next month and we're actually going to talk about the power 42. If anyone wants to put in the chat, you may know what that's a pop culture reference to, but actually kind of geeing him out about the pure 15 architectural decisions under the covers that have actually led to a very long life storage platform.
02:06
But then also this is kind of a follow up to the enterprise for all session we did with Sam Merei last year. We're gonna kind of geek out about the underlying technology that makes evergreen much more than just a marketing program. OK? I think we're rolling as always, I'm your host. I'm not going to introduce myself because you've probably seen this slide a couple of
02:26
times. What I actually want to call out here though is our topic today is eventually we're gonna wander into customer outcomes and experience and professional services. That's a topic near and dear to my heart. Part of my, how I got fired into my first partner role was because I used to do all my own installs.
02:41
I figured this stuff out and managed it and even did some internal project management. Then I was a hybrid presales and post sales engineers and then worked with project managers. It's like this is stuff that matters. We talk about solutions, it's not just the products, there's a lot more to it than that because of those topics that we're gonna cover. I'm really happy to be joined by Tom and Scott
03:01
Tom. Do you mind introducing yourself. Sure. Hello everyone. It's good to see everybody on chat from earth from everywhere around the globe. My name is Tom Schroeder. And as I mentioned earlier, I live in New Jersey. Uh, I went to school in West Virginia at West Virginia University.
03:18
I'm a mountaineer. So if there's any mountaineers out there, let's, let's see, a holler and chat. Um, I am responsible for pure global professional services. So essentially we help our customers wherever and whenever they need it to really, really, really adopt our technology quick. I've been doing this for 26 years all in customer facing roles,
03:42
whether it's been customer success, professional services, technical services and any of you have been around long enough provisioning, which is a term. I don't even think they use it Andrew anymore. Do they provisioning? Uh, and hey, when I'm not here, uh helping our customers, I love coaching lacrosse.
04:01
You could see that picture down there. It's me coaching a lacrosse team. Uh, I love to cook and then up top are my two boys. Uh, the one on the left is 17 and the one on the right, uh, will be 20 soon TJ. And it's a little bit about me. Pretty cool. Thank you, Tom Scott.
04:18
Thank you for jumping in with us today. Over to you. All right. Thank you. So, I too am a jersey. I born in Red, uh, born in red, born and bred actually in New Jersey. Um About seven years ago, I decided to get out ahead of uh the baby boomers and uh transplanted down to South
04:36
Florida. And so that's where I am right now. But uh my heart is always in New Jersey. I'm a Rutgers, uh Rutgers graduate. And uh I, I've been in this business for about 30 probably about 30 years. I started with the mainframe if anybody remembers what that is. Uh And then obviously worked my way through a
04:56
number of technology transitions, but spent most of the last 20 years in professional service is uh management, leadership roles, everything from service, engineering to uh to operations, to delivery. And now uh my focus is on service sales. Uh My hobbies are golf fitness. I like to snorkel. I like the scuba shallow water. I get my paddy certification.
05:19
Uh and I love history. Just anything history, American history and now getting it more into European history. Uh I've spent a lot of time volunteering for a number of different uh efforts. S over America gather car work camps and, and tunnels. Uh to towers is some of the ones I spend most of my time with uh the pictures there.
05:38
That's my, my lovely wife Sharon, who's a realer down here in South Florida. Hint anybody need property. Come on down. Uh This is from my uh vacation two weeks ago where I was nuba scuba diving uh in Hawaii. Um Thanks thanks to pure and the great success we've had.
05:57
And then, uh, the picture on the right is, uh, West Point and, uh, what's, uh, what we leave in the wake of our volunteer work, raising money for wreaths and laying them on the, uh, the soldiers' graves. So it's, uh, I, I try and give back wherever I can. Very cool.
06:13
I love the background and, and actually for those kind of playing the at home game, Scott is being bold. Uh Tom and I are doing virtual background and can figure that out. You know, we're all high tech. So uh and we may even get a cameo. I think Tom from your cat, you were saying and Scott, I'm almost hoping for a caddy shack
06:30
moment kind of in the reflection behind you. I I don't know but that that would make it, I mean, we're gonna talk about amazing stuff, but that would be even more memorable. So cool. So diving in, we are here to talk about solution success, faster outcomes, pairing up product and services and you as always kind of a
06:49
lightweight agenda. Not too much like it says, please make sure please put uh Q and A in the chat. We have Don and Emily to help with the chat. Um Don is part of the professional services team. Emily can help with a lot of different items as well. This is always you kind of think about the
07:02
three ven diagram stuff, you know, people process and technology or PPT, I've thought over the years we're gonna wander through the first half, even kind of talking about. Actually Tom a little bit of your background, appreciate you being willing to share some about kind of the how you focus throughout your career in various ways on the customer experience.
07:19
Then moving into some of kind of kind of where does services solutions, where do solutions come from, you know, that are services a little bit of a AAA little bit of where where do babies come from, but maybe from a solution standpoint, you know, where do they actually come from and get created? They actually thinking about how pure is still focused on simplicity and and there's some
07:36
stuff in the past and you're like, hm pure professional services. That's interesting because there's a channel partner focus here and then last but not least, um we're not here to just talk about what pure does, but we are here to help you understand how we can help you in in actually real way stuff that you can do. As I mentioned, please feel free to put a Q and A in the chat.
07:53
We have folks to help with that. Hopefully, that feels fair as always. It's roughly the same field. We're going to be telling stories, hopefully some details that will help you in your career, your work life as we go along or maybe even like we said, a good caddy shack moment or a cat came.
08:06
So timing it first, I think Tom, as we were, as we were chatting a little bit ahead of time. Um, you've, you've been doing this, as you mentioned for 26 years and, and this was actually your tagline that what you've focused on over the years is all about the customer experience. Do you, do you mind kind of talk expanding that a little bit and kind of how you got started?
08:28
Yeah, but I, I love how you remind me that it's been 26 years and I'm ready. Right? I did and I saw someone in chat go wow. But then Scott made me feel a heck of a lot better about myself and younger when he said 34 or whatever it was. But, but look just, um, starting there, it, I've spent my entire career
08:52
servicing customers in one way or another and I love it. And if, if any of you go to my bio on linkedin, you're gonna see the first thing you're gonna see says that I'm obsessed with the customer experience and I am, um, I notice it everywhere I go and whether that's stepping on an airplane to going to a restaurant, to even walking into the gym, I noticed if somebody greets me says hello,
09:19
uh, looks at me with a frown, whatever it might be. And when I see that, I always think to myself, man, you know, I want to give the customers that I service the best experience possible. And even if that means me picking up the phone and I had three different customers, call me today who needed help.
09:39
And if I don't, if I can't help them or it's not my group, I just own it and I take it so I can give them the best experience possible. Or if it means getting our customers up and running quickly on the technology so they can realize their business objectives. That's what I love to do. And it's pervasive throughout my being very cool.
09:58
I think I, I was even looking back, I mean, where, where you started was not actually in tech, there was a, there was a non tech version and then this is, this is where full disclosure, I was stalking you on Google and linked in a little bit, you know, I, I think I found this article where you're a, you, you, you, you, you wrote in a, in a, a Prez world,
10:16
I think, you know, kind of thing. So, so how did you get started both kind of in services and then in tech services? It's, it's uh I get asked this question a lot because people see that I went to West Virginia University, which you're familiar with the United States isn't quite uh a big booming metropolis or a, or a tech hub. Although Richard Branson has put um the Virgin
10:39
uh hyper loop there. Adobe's investing and then um Chambers John Chambers, you guys might remember from Cisco uh is now, has his name on the West Virgin University Business School. And he's starting to make West Virginia a startup state. But I digress. So I started at West Virginia and people say,
10:58
well, how did you get into tech? I was a uh agriculture major. I wanted to control pollution for the environment. But my, my, yeah, it's an interesting thing that not many people know about me. But I uh my father was in technology uh worked for AT&T his entire life and he
11:17
said, hey Thomas, he calls me Thomas. And so does my mom um I can, you can get a job in agriculture or I can get you a job in telecom. And I said awesome. So I took it and I started my career delivering phone service. I mean, you remember those dialy things with the boards attached to them pots,
11:37
lines, yes po telephone system or something like that. And uh so, so I started working directly with customers there in the B to C environment and I always found it rewarding just helping them get their service going even in the days where you had to configure something as simple as call waiting. Uh I, I loved it because I could impact them directly.
12:03
So that's where I got my start, believe it or not. So then, then in that and, and kind of here, you know, I just might jump to a little bit. So you, you wandered obviously from Consumer to B to C then into B to B. Do you mind kind of maybe encapsulating a couple of cool projects that you've, you've worked along,
12:21
you've worked on along the way? Yeah. Yeah. So, so everything I, I've worked on some cool projects in my career and, and um all of them were transforming customer businesses. One of the coolest things I ever did, I worked for uh a company who they don't exist anymore. Their name was Glow Point.
12:39
And um this was before the, the, the age of Zoom. And you had just mentioned about the uh the article I wrote but instead of video conferencing what we did here, which was really cool was ESPN came to us and said, hey, we want you to help us get more content. It's before Zoom. It was before iphones um out into the field and cheaper is there a way we could use video
13:07
conferencing to go live to TV? So we thought, and we put our tech brains on. We said, man, there's no reason why we can't get T ones 1.5 megabits or bonded T ones or bonded T one HTSL. Yeah. So back in those days before, you know, internet was pervasive to each of the stadium sites so that we could have live
13:34
video on air personalities without rolling trucks without getting satellites involved saving ESPN millions and millions and millions of dollars and we did that and we actually ran that draft powered by Global Point. It set at the bottom for something like 15 years. Really helping them move the needle forward of getting content to the edge if you will.
13:58
It was, it was, it was really, really awesome. One of the most exciting things I ever did and, and I got one more if you don't mind, Andrew one more. Um I spent tele, yeah, I spent 9 11 in New York City in telecommunications, working for edits in the electric company.
14:17
And at that time, we were building out diverse networks in the street of Manhattan. Uh it diversed from what's known today as Verizon. It used to be called the Empire City subway system and you, you chuckle. Um So in at the end of things, when 9 11 happened, the New York Stock Exchange went down for something like three or four days,
14:42
which was the most it's ever gone down in history. And they came to us and said, hey, you have these diverse rights away in the streets. We want you to build us a network that will never go down. So we built something called the safety network and it was a 77 city seven point data center network that would have to fail in five different locations for the Stock Exchange
15:07
to ever go down. So two ends of the spectrum, one serving TV. And and content and to people the other one clearing trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars a day. Really awesome experience. And by the way, Scott, I appreciate you being good.
15:25
I should have set up a front where I was going to kind of chat with Tom a little first and we'll go back and forth. Scott's being a really good sport. So, you know, thank you. And I think you're just enjoying the conversation. Hopefully, these are excellent. Well, Scott Scott Scott's also used Scott and I have worked together for many years,
15:38
different companies. He's used to me talking, talking, talking. So, so these are like old skills, like, uh, what's for lunch? What's for dinner? Yeah, pretty much the, um, so there, there were, there were two last things I wanted to kind of hit on in this opening opening spot here if you don't mind,
15:53
Tom. So one is actually something that we do periodically we take on buzzwords. If we use a buzzword incorrectly, it sounds like you don't know what you're talking about. But often there's a, there's a kernel of truth or more to certain buzzwords. The one I wanted to kind of toss at you is Business Transformation.
16:12
Is that a buzzword? How much is it or not? And what even kind of comes to mind for you that actually has some reality to it behind that? Well, I mean, look, I think if you just take those two examples that I just gave both of them are rooted in transformation of some sort. One was about transforming the way ESPN went to air if you will.
16:36
Um And then the other one was about data center and availability transformation. You know, transformation from my perspective is not always about cost savings. It's about how do we, how do we conduct business better and whatever that means for you and your business. OK, I think that's every day. Uh Everything we do, Andrew everywhere.
16:57
Well, I think this is, this is even where part of why a lot of is I'll speak for myself. I think a lot of people listening in you like to build you, like to create in ways that matter. We can, we can do science projects. That's cool. And sometimes that's a little bit derogatory not to my, my friends that scientists are listening in,
17:13
you know, kind of thing, but it's like that real world impact, maybe you call it theoretical versus applied science, you know, if we go back to high school or in college kind of thing. Last one for you. Actually, Tom, is that what, what we've, what we've heard so far is pieces that hit on,
17:27
you know, ESPN NYSC. How did that for you? Vert, wander into the professional services aspect? I mean, I can, I can kind of think about a professional services, the human implementation aspect of everything you said. But I'm curious how you got pulled into that specifically, you know,
17:43
uh, I got pulled into professional services by chance. Um, I, I was II, I was at a startup that Globe Point for eight years and, um, I decided to take a break and like most of us do. We keep our phones on our, our nightstands. I, I turned over one morning, I was probably two days into my break and I picked up my phone and I'm scrolling through it
18:09
like most of us do and I clicked on linkedin and I saw an opportunity and it was one of those in applies. You know, have you ever seen them Andrew where you just click and you click and then it applied and uh oh, I guess I did apply. I exactly, I was trying to take some time off and um I wound up getting the job and that's
18:32
how I got into data storage. Um But that chance was, was a uh I got the job for customer success and which I knew nothing about at the time. And I think it's a good message for anybody listening. If you have an aptitude, the right attitude and you're hard working, you can learn anything. You can't teach those three skills and the
18:56
person that hired me saw that. So I, so I, so I got in at customer service and then as the company that I was with started going through its own transformation, which did happen to include consolidation. I, that's how I found myself in professional services and I quickly reflected on it so well. I don't know a ton about this. I reflected on all my experience and some of
19:19
the things I talked to you all about and I said, hm I know how I can create an awesome experience, customer experience in this role. Uh End users need help. Uh It is not always uh the end users aren't always kind of it. For example, both ways. It totally goes both ways and you know, end users don't have patience.
19:41
I think a lot of us have experienced that and everything is needed now. So I thought to myself, hey, what I could do is I could use my love for the customer experience to help it organizations by providing an outstanding service to their customers. And that's what I've been doing ever since. So what I, what I find interesting there is even there's some threads there.
20:03
Like, I mean, I, I was hired in my first job out of college by a guy who was my boss and help desk and said, like this kid basically can learn. I didn't even know what a V land was or really about data centers, but like I had the drive and the aptitude because I, I did a lot on my own Mac support.
20:16
The other piece there that I find interesting is that I remember even and this is now kind of remember we're just gonna call us the elephant in the room sometimes. Right. There are times where you might feel threatened. I felt threatened at times in my career because I wanted to do all the things. But then I realized, you know, my boss can't even said,
20:33
how long is this project gonna take? It's like, well, I haven't done this before. I can tell you when I'm done, but I got to figure it out. If you want to know how long it's gonna take, we're gonna have to pay someone to come in who's done it before or I don't have the time to do it with all the other projects or I could do it all.
20:46
I, I just can't clone myself four times, you know. So there's this level of augmentation to meet business outcomes in reality. And of course, there's financial aspects there and that even I'm gonna bridge a little bit if it's all right, Tom over to Scott for a little bit. Kind of thinking about when we think about professional services.
21:03
It says there people process and technology. This is a lot of the, the professional services is kind of the, is in some ways the people on the process side. I'm curious, Scott, when we, when we've looked at this as pure, how have we determined kind of what services we should create? Because I've sometimes seen services where the manufacturer created the service more as a
21:23
marketing thing. Like, hey, look, we do all this stuff, but no one actually, it's never actually done for customers. Um But I'm curious how you look at that when you're kind of creating service offerings. Well, that's, uh that's a great question and, and having had service engineering in my background and firsthand, you know, knowledge of, of how we've evolved in this,
21:42
in this regard, you know, a pure and, and really in any other responsible technology vendor, you know, you start, you, you have an inside out and an outside in approach. Um the outside in approach is what are the customer pain points? What are the impediments to a customer achieving their digital journey and their digital goals? Uh And, and once you've got that,
22:04
then you start inward and you say, OK, I have this piece of technology. What problems can this technology solve? And how do we build this framework from discovery through operation with this technology? Uh that gets that accelerates that journey that the customer is looking to achieve? Right? And so, you know, when I, when we then look at
22:28
a, a new service or a new portfolio offering, we look at it from a life cycle perspective. And we say, OK, um these are the important questions upfront that need to be asked. All right. And, and these are the trigger points that successful companies are building to get to that answer quickly or identify what that problem or problems are. Then we say, OK, how do we streamline a
22:53
methodology to deploy that technology in the way that we've discovered or in the fashion that the customer wants it to be deployed in this discovery phase. And then ultimately, how do we continue to improve that customer experience by accelerating consumption? Right. And uh and, and giving the customer everything they need to operate that technology on an ongoing basis and
23:15
identify when that technology should be refreshed again. And that's kind of how we look at a solution and how we build our offerings. Um and, and, and why, you know, as Tom said, you, you know, we've got this relentless desire um to see customers move and move forward uh and move forward quickly and then obviously, ultimately move forward with pure.
23:38
So when, when we were chatting about this and, and for everyone listening, like we're not reading from a script, you can tell that, but, you know, we plan out some of what we're going to go through and then we added some extra stuff and it just, you know, spur of the moment when, when Scott was describing that to me earlier and having worked in kind of creating service
23:52
offerings, I loved that start with the customer, like you said, you know, kind of inside out, outside, in and the other way sometimes I thought about it is the day zero, day one, day two for anyone listening. And this is either kind of what I lived as a customer or if we're trying to think about, you know, what real life is like, you know, so Day zero is a basically what you said,
24:12
Scott, right? That upfront architecture workshops, requirements, day one getting at the initial setup, that's often where I was frankly as a customer, you know, to get that because only over time did I get involved in the initial the product selection? Often I was running it day to day admin or I was, hey, here's the thing that we already chose, go set it up and it was like,
24:29
oh, ok. But then day two is even how do we keep it going over time? And, and even if, if you haven't thought about it this way, uh this is now just a little bit of a side note as any time you're looking at any given project. What is this gonna take? What is this gonna take and how much will this
24:47
recurring cost decrease the amount of these items that you can do or that you can do in house versus that you may have to bring someone else in, in to help you with. Right? There's not a, there's not a right or wrong answer here that the goal is, is getting to the outcome.
25:01
I feel like I saw a lot of your thunder there, Scott, you know, but please keep going before I kind of jump into section number three. No, you know what? Everybody has a framework for solving problems. Um you know, uh you know, this is your framework. Um but it, you know, I, I think in general the method getting from identifying a problem to
25:19
getting to a solution, right? Is all the same, it all has the same steps. Um And uh at pure, what we're trying to do in our portfolio is say no matter where you are in that problem life cycle, we have a place where you can jump in and we can help you, right? So it's not always, you know, uh it's not all
25:37
when you look at technology, it's not always deployment, deploy, deployment, right? Because, you know, deployment really is sort of the end game after you've done all the thinking and all the planning and all the identifying and all and, and, and you have a way to prioritize what needs to get done 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
25:56
So if you've got a method to do that, you know, once you get to, to the technology that should be a no brainer, right? That should be to me the easiest part. Um the hardest part is doing the planning prioritizing where you spend your time, right? Because time is obviously the most valuable
26:11
resource and the enterprise has. Um and, and then, you know, knowing that when you're finished, when you get to that outcome, you know, you're addressing the most important priorities that you have in your digital um direction and, and your uh ultimate company strategy. The, there's a great comment from uh Dennis. I won't say your last name just in case you
26:33
didn't want to be at in the, in the Q and A actually about, you know, the acceleration is not the answer. Uh If we accelerate, we're almost doing a little bit of the um ready fire aim. You know, we need to know what we're trying to drive toward and then we accelerate that. But we, like you're saying, we, we've got to plan that out.
26:51
Ok, moving into section three and now we'll kind of bounce back and forth a little bit. So there was a, there was actually some kind of humorous things here if we look at a little bit of pure history, um, pure has a trademark and part of why I think we're all here is that it's the focus that pure has on simplicity, both at a, at a product level and, and as much as we can at a process level, you know, there's humans,
27:10
humans make complexity. That's what we do as humans, right? But the idea of simplicity in a complex world and also that pure is partner first and a lot of the partners that we work with have their own service offerings and they should and we want them to. So I wanted to kind of wander around those two topics.
27:27
But before I, I think, I think, turn it over to, um, Scott will probably kind of bounce it to you. And then Tom is as I was actually going through the way back machine. And uh this is a 2015 slide from pure one box, 30 minute install six cables, no manual required. So that almost feels like we should just be
27:44
done this right now and everyone can take their coffee cards and go home, right? But the the reality is let me be a little snarky is even if the pure products are comparatively simple compared to the competition in the marketplace, they still go into complex environments. Like if you joined us this last month, you saw this slide where,
28:00
you know, sometimes as you do upfront business impact analysis, consulting to map applications and into tiers, the underlying pure products in this landscape can be pretty simple, but there's all this stuff that wraps around it kind of thing. So I'm I'm curious, Scott when you think about both simplicity and working with partners, so you might kind of give him some commentary there.
28:20
Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, you're right. It it seems like it's always the elephant in the room. Um You know, why, why does pure have professional services in the first place when the technology is easy? And we love our partners and we want our partners, you know, to be experts in our technology.
28:37
And, and the answer is I, you know, I may be less obvious than most people think. I mean, first of all, um we build professional services because pure needs a place to originate best practices for new technology that we roll out the door. We can't expect our partners to be experts in, you know, the latest innovations that pure brings to the market.
28:58
And so it's, it's a, it's in a place for ideation, building, best practice, practice methodologies and then being able to, you know, push those out to our partners uh in a responsible fashion. The second reason is none of all of our partners have robust, mature professional services organizations.
29:17
So our goal right is to fill the gaps that partners may have geographically. Um technically, uh from a scaling perspective. Um while at the same time making sure that we're not leaving anything off the table because a specific partner we agree to go to market with doesn't have a tech, a certain technology that might improve the outcome, right? And then finally, you know, the last reason why
29:42
we have professional services is uh there are some customers that come to pure and say, look, I love your partner and I love what you guys do, but I want pure throat to choke, you know, and I don't like to use that word, but I've heard that it's a real one. You didn't make enough customers are very straightforward and they say, oh no, I want one throat to choke and then we're not violent,
30:05
violent, we're kind of gentler cup. Thank you, Tom. We are, but, and that's why I usually wear something around my neck just in case. But uh but you know, so, so really, those are the three primary reasons why uh we have professional services, why we try and grow in a, in a,
30:23
in a very responsible fashion. Uh And under Tom's leadership, um we've really done a tremendous job, uh you know, building out an organization that we can stand behind and, and some an organization that helps our partners and our customers with that customer experience. Now, now I'm hoping Scott that I never see you
30:43
in a neck brace because if I do, I almost, I almost don't think I'm gonna wanna ask, I, I wanna be like, I'm fine, but I don't feel like I should ask. There's even one other thing here, Tom, you, you were, when you, you were mentioning there's this thing called the hairball problem. I, I don't think your cat has made a cameo yet. Otherwise, maybe we could play off of that.
31:00
I don't know. But, but what, what is in this, in this context? What's the hairball problem? Well, um simply put uh our technology is simple, like everybody just discussed, but your environments, our customers environments, your customers environments are not that simple.
31:19
And when, when we talk about the hair ball, it can be anything from years and years and years and years of acquisitions. I saw a hospital in the Midwest in the country a hospital system that that bought 18 hospital and they put them together. That's a great example is a hairball where now all of a sudden they have to start to integrate all of that together. Or just think the big banks,
31:46
for example, I mean, think about the consolidation of the banking industry over the last 30 years, different technologies, different people, different networks, different systems, process tools, automation, it gets so complex. So while our technology is still simple and you don't need help if you don't want it, the everything we're dealing out there with is not
32:11
simple. And, and that's really what a services organization does is help untangle that hairball. It reminds me a little a couple of years ago. Was that a hashi comp and one of the comments in the keynote of these companies, this is a company that makes terraform and console involved. OK. You know, I'm not meant to be a free app but we
32:24
partner with them. They, they, they create great stuff, multiple friends. There is a comment from the keynote um CMO I think so. You know that any, any company, you're only one merger and acquisition away from becoming a multi cloud company, even if you did everything in Aws or Azure or GCB or pick your cloud kind of thing,
32:40
you're probably not gonna get consulted at a high scale merger and acquisition and you're just gonna have to deal with multiple clouds, multiple data centers multiple, all this stuff just, just like you're saying, OK, so bring it home. This is where, uh and, and I'm hoping by the way, this is just interesting conversation from folks that have been living this for a long time and,
33:00
and doing it well, that's, that's the feel that you get. But we wanted to explicitly focus in on how pure helps in this area. And this is along with our partners too. But, but let's be real about how pure can help. So there's definitely an aspect here where, where our goal is to meet customers, where they are, every customer, even when I was a customer for different projects and even
33:21
different points in my career, I had different needs and knowledge levels and factors that I was dealing with that. Tom Do you mind kind of walking through how we do that? Yeah. Um Before I get to that though. So I, I wanted to let everybody know what the mission of this organization that I have the privilege to lead is. And it's very simple.
33:43
It's to help our customers accelerate the adoption of the technology quickly. That's it. And I've often simple that to provide an awesome customer experience always. But as you mentioned, Andrew, uh and I think Scott might have mentioned it too. Customers can be anywhere in their life cycle you use day zero,
34:06
day one day two. Um We could call it pre sale uh implementation and post sale but here at pure, we've, we've divvied it up into evaluate activate and innovate. And we've done that because we want customers to understand that if you want help evaluating your data management strategy and notice, I didn't say pure technology,
34:35
right? Because we live in a hybrid cloud world today. And if we think about the hairball, we have many, many different technologies on prem and some of them are very, very good, whether they're old or new. So we can help you figure out well, what should I move to the cloud? What should I keep on prem? What workload should go on pure?
34:58
What workload should go on one of the other um uh folks out there and, and ultimately, how, how does that impact your performance? How does that help you with cost? And we have workshops to help you do that you're not expected as the it professional or the business professional or the data science professional to understand every thing in the ecosystem for technology.
35:20
So that's really what the evaluate piece helps you do. Well, once you've decided what it is you want to go do for your data management strategy, then we help you actually achieve that vision and that goal or that architecture. If you will um very simple things like implementation, services, installation project management man, you know what you might not need help implement,
35:44
implementing, but you sure can't oversee all the moving parts. And then there's things such as moving data. Um There's things such as automation base level automation. So really helping you achieve that day one, that activation or the implementation phase, get up, get running, start adopting technology, start achieving your business goals.
36:06
And then the last piece of that, which I think is the coolest part is really around innovation. And that's where we all collectively as, as an ecosystem here, really just bring value to either our collective customers, our organizations or even just joy from ourselves. And that's well, how do I take this technology and help the company achieve an awesome
36:31
customer experience? How do I help the cuff company reduce cost, how do I become more efficient or, or how do I put in that, that awesome system that's gonna help us serve data, whatever it is, the innovation phase, we have experts to really, really help do that and do that well. And that's the fun part. I almost feel like you're channeling,
36:52
channeling a little bit of kind of Marie condo here. Like does you look at the services offerings and catalog and does this offering bring me joy? And, and if so it stays, if not, maybe, maybe, maybe not. We, we're, we're actually at that, that part right now in our, in our life, like with our group where we're like, does this bring us joy?
37:09
Just bring our customers joy? Ah, let's get rid of it. So if we I I love the evaluate, activate innovate framework. If we go kind of a little bit deep, keep going deeper, we're gonna kind of keep peeling and we can keep going down. So there is a, a framework that following that framework, we do have various services
37:27
offerings. Some of them, uh you, you would expect, of course, there's got to be things around installation and there's really good stuff there, even with some neat stuff with remote installation that we can do migration. Hopefully your last migration ever because after you get on to pier, you don't need to migrate again, right? But you,
37:41
you still got to do it. Great stuff with our business critical services. I think Tom uh Scott to kind of and bring us home here while, while we've got some of the bread and butter services. And I don't wanna keep you from commenting on anything. I know that you had some commentary here. But also I think you wanted to kind of dive
37:57
into a little bit of the uh advanced services specifically. Yeah. Um You know, the advanced service is part of our portfolio is the one we've actually put, you know, I I'm gonna say most of the emphasis on uh over this past year. Um and it really is, it's transformative. You know,
38:15
I talked up again about the problem life cycle and it, we really can't talk about problems unless we understand the genesis. And so in our advanced services portfolio, we have workshops to look at things like data protection and safe mode uh and ransomware and you know, VM advisory uh workshops to help customers really leverage the power of VM on our platform
38:37
V uh VM Ware on our platform um workshops that allow us to go in and spend time with customers helping to pray prioritize the most appropriate platform for applications um either on Prem hybrid cloud or hyper scalar um workshops that allow us to come in and help customers devise an automation strategy. And let's face it, automation, you know, is really uh you know, it, it's the goal right now,
39:04
you know, in every aspect of what we do from delivering it as a service. Uh And so there's so many things now that we're doing um for automation, I think at one customer, you know, where we came in, we program managed the deployment of 340 uh arrays from August to now. And to do that successfully, we had to, we had
39:25
to integrate uh pure rest API with zero touch provisioning software. And we were able to provide updates for the entire fleet of 340 arrays in one week as a result of the uh the automation work that we did for this, you know, for this major uh social media company. So when you look at things like that and you look at the results that we're getting from,
39:50
you know, custom automation and answerable and um and you look at the um the strategies that we're developing through our multi cloud strategy workshop or, or automation workshop or, you know, um uh uh the things that we're doing around um uh VM Ware and other platforms, you know, it's amazing to see what kinds of um what kinds of outcomes that we can drive. I mean, yes, data migration is a huge part of
40:18
our portfolio. Be thankfully because a lot of customers are transitioning into pure. Um But at the same time, you know, we wanna be in a position where we're, we're not just having that discussion on transition, we're having that discussion before transition, you know, through these workshops and through some of the more advanced things we can do in our portfolio.
40:39
Awesome. I love it. And I was even, I was even thinking as you were talking about some of the automation, I was thinking in the past or I, I think I've been guilty of the I automated something I didn't actually save any time by the time I finished automating it, but I sure had a lot of fun and I learned a lot of stuff and hopefully in this case,
40:53
what we're not doing that, we're taking it further. But even for those folks where so you like man, I don't have the time to automate this because we are like you mentioned an api first platform. There's the simplicity of even the things you have to automate. Uh in some cases, I have a, a peer Matt Robertson actually talked about in a previous life.
41:08
It was 100 line script with pure turned into a 10 line script plus some commands that weren't even available via API on the other platform. And then we have the smart people that can help you do that and push it further. Those, those stories that Scott just told are, are really what makes me smile just getting the customers, those kind of, that kind of efficiency that you just talked about is
41:29
just, that's why I do it. It's outstanding. I think with that the, the time iii I don't know if I say it every month, but it's true. Every month, whether I say it or not, the time flies 42 minutes since we started, we're gonna move into a little bit of drawing and we'll stay around for Q and A. We always try and be respectful about the 45
41:47
minute mark for y'all. However, um I'm gonna flip a virtual coin, maybe Scott and then Tom any final thoughts that you want to put in to bring us home, please? Hey, Scott. Uh you know, II I just want to say that, you know, you can't be, you know, I I've been in the business longer than time as he,
42:07
I pointed out before. And um you know, uh you would think that over time, you know, that, that exhilaration um and that excitement wanes but I feel more uh excited about what I'm doing here with pure, uh than at any time in my career. And, uh, and the, and the reason for that is, um, you know,
42:30
I believe in what we do as a company, I believe directionally in what we do and I believe in professional services. Um, you know, uh you know, I, I always say, you know, if we don't sell something, nothing happens. But which is one of my favorite expressions. However, um if we sell something, we better make it happen,
42:50
right? And that's what gets me up in the morning and that's what, you know, drives me to uh you know, uh to wanna work with customers and partners and, and, and help them achieve and, and that's why I spent a lot of time, you know, keeping a finger on our portfolio and the things that we're doing in our portfolio because uh uh I, I feel like that is, in fact the uh bread and butter of uh of a successful
43:12
company uh and a successful professional services organization. I, I see you doing it every day. Just an internal call. We were sitting on earlier this week and you're coming on to talk about some of that exact stuff internally. So, very true. Tom. Uh two things. I hope you all took something away here that
43:30
you can either use in your jobs, your life or think about how you can approach a problem with, uh, and then the second thing Scott hit on which is be happy with, with what you're doing. Um, because when you're happy with what you're doing and you enjoy who you're working with it makes that piece about, uh, servicing your customers or your internal users, whatever it is that much more enjoyable.
43:57
Um That's what I got. Andrew. Thanks everybody for attending. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Everybody. I feel like I should, I should throw this up here for a second and you can take a screenshot, you'll get the slides afterwards. But there's a, there's a comprehensive portfolio because of folks that actually enjoy doing this and
44:11
building and creating and adapting to what customers need. Tom Scott. Thank you so much. A little bit of wrap up and then we'll hang around for Q and A. So, hey, don't, don't jump yet because we got a drawing next month, we'll be joined by JD Wallace. We are going to geek out about the
44:25
architectural underpinnings of here from back in 2009, the very beginning of here and how those capabilities that technical foundation has continued playing out as well. You'll see actually, uh while we're hanging out here putting up a poll for interest in future topics, I actually saw that last month, but we figured, hey, wanna do it again this month,
44:43
we'll get, we'll gather some more data in a case. You only stayed around for the drawing. Hopefully you stayed around for more than that but greatly appreciate Kevin De from Tampa Florida. We'll be reaching out to you. You are the proud winner or hopefully happy winner of an ember mug, the kind that you can control with your phone,
44:59
you can go find it on Amazon or anywhere else. I'll be reaching out to you for that. And with that, we are actually at the end of our time, we were just about within one minute of time. So if you need to drop, you need to get a bathroom break or a bio break or eat lunch before your next uh, meeting, please feel free. But if you want to stay around,
45:15
we're gonna have some open conversation. I'm actually probably gonna pull the music here back just up a little bit. Not too much. I'll look at, uh, I'll look deeply into Tom and Scott's eyes to see if it's too loud. Hopefully not, it's fine. But you know what's,
45:29
what's funny is? So we, we, we talked about Josie, my cat and Jojo coming and making an appearance. The one time I would have liked to have made, have her made appearance. She's sleeping down here on the ground. That feels like what cats do. Can I say that?
45:46
Maybe right. I think, I think it is. Exactly. They do the opposite of what you want them to do. I am sharing as well folks, the, the results of the poll so you can see we had 380 responses there. Thank you all. Didn't want to leave it up too long and you know, be,
46:01
be annoying for folks. Um But let's actually go in and uh don thank you so much. You did a great job with questions, but let's just go through a couple as always. Um There, there's usually a few about slides and recording. Um You will receive an email afterwards with the PDF of the slides as well as the record as
46:19
well as the recording link, please. And please feel free to pass that along internally. Um The goal is that we put these up online so that you can listen to this afterwards or you're like, man, I wish my boss or my boss's boss or my peer was here, you know, that kind of thing, right?
46:32
So I think let's go ahead and dive into some of the questions that even were done, even though he answered them, we're going to kind of play them, play them back a little bit here. So maybe Scott, I'll throw this one at you first. I think I'll give a little bit of commentary.
46:50
Um So there's a question about automation tools that you can have basically if you want to automate cloning snapshots. So a little bit of my commentary there is, I think about the fundamental capabilities of pure snapshots aren't chained to a volume like on other platforms, you can copy any snapshot to a new volume instantly. You can do all of that from an API I'm guessing you've got a story or two where we helped
47:13
customers do some pretty cool things with snapshots and cloning and automation. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. Um In fact, we, we helped a major bank, you know, um actually realize, you know, probably a savings of um, so we, we took their uh their, their entire database refresh cycle from four hours to about 30
47:37
minutes, um leveraging leveraging uh snapshot of automation, uh we leverage, you know, we, we have several approaches uh in these environments, we can, you know, leverage or Python um answer is becoming much more of a relevant technology in this case. Um And uh you know what, as I said, we, we generally start right with a few with what is the customer doing today in automation?
48:03
Uh And then what are they trying to, what are they trying to achieve? Is it the same? Um Do you want to take full advantage of some of the new um you know, feature and functionality of the PR platform? And then we develop a functional spec and solution that, that drives customers to those that end game Python.
48:23
Answerable powershell, depending upon your operating system are all different tools you can use to uh to accomplish that. Right? Very cool. Um There's an interesting question from Jonathan Pierce, which is actually a, it's a, it's actually a cool historical one.
48:41
I'm gonna, I'm gonna cheat and go back here a little bit. So the question from John John is well on. Thanks for, thanks for always joining John noticing the new coffee break logo actually. Yeah. Well this is, this is always a little free for him. So if you join a little later, we do have an
48:54
official coffee break logo. We're getting more official every month, you know, give or take roughly John's question though is when I purchased pure a little while back, I assume my se was the person who racked and stacked and set everything up for those. You don't know, sales engineer, you know, pre sales engineer, you're not necessarily paying them to come out.
49:09
Um It was very easy and straightforward. So and that was where we were kind of actually pulling this up from the way back machine. It is and it still is and that hasn't changed except in some ways. Uh So then the question is if it's that easy and straightforward, where would a partner or professional services come in?
49:24
So, is this still true? Absolutely. However, our customer profile has shifted somewhat, especially when you're starting out, you know, the people that take a chance on you are maybe not the global 100 or fortune 100 kind of thing. But as you start, as we're more successful, we find we're in larger environments with diversity from a geographical location, from a skill set from even,
49:46
you know, bonded and insured, you know, all this other stuff that goes into it. I think I'm going to make this one a jump ball to maybe Tom and Scott about just Jonathan's question. It's still the same underlying simplicity, but there is a role for partner in professional services here if whoever wants to jump in both. Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely agree.
50:04
Like I mentioned, and we've been talking about our technology is simple, it does not require professional services. So that observation is completely accurate, however, you might be new to pure once it is installed and gets up and running quickly and might not understand all the features, the functionality and how you can really take advantage of the technology to innovate and both ese professional services.
50:33
Frankly. Anybody at pure can help educate you on that. And I think alone, that's the value of an installation when pure is involved, Scott. Yeah. And just to add to that is we have other ways to enable our, our customers, right? Uh You know, and, and our partners, we have, you know, we have peak,
50:50
um you know, which is a, which provides a variety of different training venues and certifications, you know, for both customers and, and our partners. Uh and then, um from a professional services approach perspective, a lot of cases we'll do teach to fish type of engagements where, you know, we'll sit down, we'll review with the customer, you know,
51:09
um our approach to deploying our approach to optimizing our approach to migrating. Uh And then we will do a knowledge transfer and leave that for the customer to, to take on today. Uh And, and, and so, you know, we, we're not uh an organization that says if we don't do it, it's not gonna get done, right?
51:26
We come in and say, all right, customer, where are, are you on your, you know, your expertise thing? And we will map it and we'll operate them to address that. Hey, hey, Andrew, there's, there's two things I learned on this webinar. First of all is Scott, um is going to give people a throat to choke and he's going to teach people how to fish.
51:49
So, I mean, you're getting way more when you come to your technology both at the same time or they like, I don't know, I don't know how he is a better golfer than I am a fisherman. I think we will toss in two more. I'm, I'm just actually gonna go and uh flagrantly advertise next month while we're doing this.
52:11
So there is a um this is actually an interesting one. So uh Terry not gonna say your last name in case you want to be, you know, you know, confidential or private. So migrating to pure, that's awesome. You know, coming from another array of three par 70% is VMWARE.
52:25
Other is physical. I wonder about the best approach to doing this. Obviously, this can be a big question. There can be a lot of pieces here. There can be either migration workshops, migration assistants or just even stores V motion. That part's easy. Um Anything that comes to mind from either of you around kind of best practices as you're
52:39
migrating into a pure environment from kind of a competitive, mixed virtual and physical, just, you know, a couple of nuggets of things you've seen. OK. Well, you know, so again, when we look at a migration strategy, right, the three things we think about are, you know, optimize, optimizing time uh disruption and cost,
53:00
right? Um We wanna, we, and, and so every migration scenario is different. Um You know, if I, if we just look at a straight um VM ware migration, yes, we can use storage motion and, you know, generally customers have that expertise, but we have other ways to migrate VM ware environments, they're actually quicker than storage V motion.
53:21
Um And so we have to look at, you know, the uh uh tolerance level for disruption, we have to look at cost and we have to look at time and we throw those into every approach that we take for every data migration that we perform on behalf of customers. Love it, especially I think especially the tolerance for downtime. I've done that in the past because I, I used to do get paid.
53:45
Uh Well, it was, it wasn't time when ab was bonus stuff when I was on the partner side and you'd have to do songs, overnight upgrades and migrations with downtime or not. And when you could do that and, oh, change Control Windows and all this fun stuff. Right. Um, I enjoy what I do. I, but I appreciate some, sometimes what I do aside from this,
54:02
this isn't necessarily hard work but other stuff I do is hard work. But II, I have traded that happily for the not overnight, hard work because I'm like a little older than I used to be. And Mountain Dew doesn't do as much for me as it used to. So yeah, I think um we'll toss in one last one here and then we'll, we'll wrap or wind down the Q and A.
54:18
I appreciate everyone's still chiming in, in the chat. You know, this is always kind of fun. So the question is from Michael. Oh maybe we'll get him one from here from Dennis. So Michael, it's a question about how pure does distributed data centers.
54:29
Uh He's calling out in this case, the ability to be in multiple smaller data centers to be distributed or moved to a different data center uh without extra hardware. So the extra hardware is interesting. This is a huge question and a huge answer because we look across the pure portfolio fundamentally, we can scale the same platform on flash air flash blade,
54:47
very small and also very large we're doing things with uh what we look at pure fusion we're going to do probably a session on that in the future to help, you know, a single pane of glass for management kind of cloud type automation and management pure. Also, there's I've seen sometimes customers where there's sometimes a more modular nature of the controllers and how they renew and
55:06
upgrade. We upgrade them over time non disruptively. So sometimes people will almost treat it in big fleets, treat it a little bit like building blocks that they recompose and move here and move there when they need to. It's some interesting flexibility. Anything else that um Tom or Scott? And again,
55:19
I'll just make a jump ball of uh any thoughts around kind of distributed data centers, smaller, larger all over the place. I think you, I think you, you hit the nail on the head. Um I being the customer guy, I defer to you technical folks to, to, to have the answers.
55:39
There you go. I'm here to give some answers too like I'm hosting but there's still stuff in my head. You know, more or less. I think the last one we'll chime in, we got four minutes left. Um Dennis, I, I appreciate the question. You know, some questions about storage virtualization platform,
55:54
not just a platform level but data center, floor level and migration of virtual volumes across apps. So the interesting thing is um we actually have helped customers do that in some ways from a migration standpoint with active cluster, the simplicity of our synchronous replication technology, that's a mouthful of buzzwords. But it's true compared to other ones that actually sometimes you can actually stand it up
56:14
and move volumes across transparently. If you look at what we do as workload, planner and pure one for even some, you know, where things should fit or go. And then I would especially encourage you and anyone else who's really curious about this topic. We're taking a different approach to kind of the storage virtualization. Classic question which often involves,
56:31
is it in band? Is it out of band? I'll go back some products I've worked with in the past. What we're doing with fusion goes to a lot of the same outcomes. But because we have different, simpler and more flexible building blocks, we can get there in an easier way. So that is basically a 62nd ad for go.
56:47
Look at the announcement from Pure Fusion Tom Scott. I feel like I just kept going and I, I should have let you jump in sooner, but you know, back to you before we wrap up the questions, you're the, you're, you're the technical expert here. I I bow to you. I know my place well done.
57:03
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, the only thing I'll add to that is there are other, you know, other ways as well. Um leveraging uh virtualization appliances, right, that we can accomplish the same thing, but it doesn't necessarily have to be pure, to pure, it could be everything else through pure. Um So we have a lot of different ways of, of accomplishing, um,
57:24
what you just described. Awesome. I appreciate everyone who hung out here. It's always kind of crazy just, just because I know folks can't see the attendance levels. Um It's like 80 to 90% of you all hang out with us all the way through. So, you know, thanks for doing that. Hopefully, it feels a little more relaxed. It's Tom and Scott, Scott and Tom. Thank you so much for joining us.
57:45
Joining me today. I appreciate the discussion and the preparation. You know, I appreciate that too. I want to note for everyone who's listening, Emily Donna as well. Thank you for all your help. This is the end of this month's pure coffee break. Please make sure to join us next month where I and JD will be geek out about pure underlying
58:01
Technical Foundation until next month. Have a great day. Thanks everybody. Hi, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.
  • Professional Services
  • Enterprise Applications

Tom Schroeder

VP of Professional Services, Pure Storage

Scott Monaghan

Director, Service Sales and Business Development, Pure Storage

Andrew Miller

Senior Principal Technologist, Americas

Who knew that the best coffee break conversations would end up happening online? Each month, Pure’s Coffee Break series invites experts in technology and business to chat about the themes driving today’s IT agenda - much more ‘podcast’ than ‘webinar’. This is no training session—it’s a freewheeling conversation that’s as fun as it is informative and the perfect way to break up your day. While we’ll wander into Pure technology, our goal is to educate rather than sell.

When you hear Consulting & Professional Services - what comes to mind? Long migrations? Endless integration projects? Residencies that never end?

For better or worse, even the simplest products often need business consulting and professional services wrapped around them to move from “product to solution”...if only because today’s datacenters and org charts aren’t simple either. Life is about People, Process, AND Technology and after all.

Join Andrew Miller, Tom Schroeder (Pure’s VP of Professional Services) and Scott Monaghan as they discuss Tom’s history of helping customers move from products to solutions throughout his career.

We’ll then wander through Pure’s services catalog and how it complements both Pure’s simplicity and our channel partner first approach diving into 1) Advanced Services, 2) Installation Services, 3) Migration Services, and 4) Business Critical Services.

The ultimate goal? Faster outcomes and successful projects for our customers.

Simplify Your IT Environment

Your IT environment is complex, Pure Professional Services can help you simplify it.

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