Pure Storage Unveils Expanded AI Efforts At Accelerate

Pure Storage Unveils Expanded AI Efforts At Accelerate

In AI by Daniel NewmanLeave a Comment

Pure Storage Unveils Expanded AI Efforts At Accelerate

The News: Pure Storage, during its annual Accelerate conference has unveiled two expansions to its artificial intelligence offerings the company said will enable businesses to take advantage of its high-performance flash storage technology as part of an overall AI offering.

The first, a new AI Data Hub, builds off the Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s FlashBlade all-flash file and object storage offering to provide a complete pipeline from the storage of data to the AI applications.

The second, AIRI as a Service, turns the joint Pure Storage-Nvidia AI-focused AIRI platform into a service for customers not ready to host the hardware on their own. Read the news item at CRN.

Analyst Take: Last year when Pure Storage first announced Artificial Intelligence Ready Infrastructure, better known as AIRI, it was showing its early intention of playing a more important role in the proliferation of AI within the enterprise. This year at Pure Storage Accelerate, the company has doubled down and significantly expanded its offerings in AI.

Key Partnerships with NVIDIA and Arista:

It’s important to note that Pure Storage isn’t tackling the science of AI on its own. In fact, the company has remained very committed to its flash storage business.

The key to the company’s continued commitment to the advancement of AI is built around strategic partnerships with the likes of NVIDIA using its DGX-1 GPU based platform for AI and Arista networking to be coupleed with Pure’s software to scale capabilities.

The AI Data Hub Expands AIRI and AIRI Mini  

In short, the AI Data Hub leverages the FlashBlade all-flash file and object storage solutions to help enterprises develop a more streamlined deliver of stored data to AI Applicaitons.

A few keys as I see it for the AI Data Hub

1. Flashblade Infrastructure: To do AI well, there needs to be an ability to combine data warehouses, lakes, streaming analytics and software. The AI Data Hub powered by Flashblade appears to take all of this into consideration

2. Co-Development with NVIDIA: There is a strong correlation between building out ML/AI in the enterprise and NVIDIA. The fact that the AI Data Hub was co-developed with the company should provide a certain assurance to users that it thinks about the full AI journey.

AIRI as a Service

AIRI as a Service is a new cloud based consumption approach for smaller or less mature organizations seeking to leverage the Pure/NVIDIA AIRI platform but are looking to utilize in a SaaS like environment.

I see this as a sound way to win customers earlier in the AI journey.

Pure Storage Solving Complex AI Challenges and Driving Customer Experience Wins

Pure Storage isn’t always the first name that rolls of the tongue when it comes to Storage solutions, but as the relationship between Storage, Compute and AI continues to evolve, solution like those being offered by Pure will require enterprise consideration.

Pure is also becoming widely known for delivering best in class customer experience which was instrumental to the company driving the largest market share growth in storage between 2014-2018. I expect Pure’s more limited focus compared to storage competitors to also serve as an advantage to the company.

Futurum Research provides industry research and analysis. These columns are for educational purposes only and should not be considered in any way investment advice.

Read more analysis from Futurum Research:

Qualcomm Wins Partial Stay In FTC Ruling, Overturn Likely To Follow

VMware and NVIDIA Partnership Accelerates AI From On-Prem To The Cloud

IBM Wisely Goes Open Source With Its Power CPU Architecture

 

The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.

Daniel Newman is the Principal Analyst of Futurum Research and the CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise. From Big Data to IoT to Cloud Computing, Newman makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology projects, which leads to his ideas regularly being cited in CIO.Com, CIO Review and hundreds of other sites across the world. A 5x Best Selling Author including his most recent “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy,” Daniel is also a Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post Contributor. MBA and Graduate Adjunct Professor, Daniel Newman is a Chicago Native and his speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.

Leave a Comment