Cloud adoption and the rise of modern cloud-native apps will define the year ahead
Cloud and container adoption will define the next 12 months
Today marks the launch of the Technology Product Awards 2021 - the only award show in the Computing calendar where you have a direct say in who takes home the prize.
Unlike other events, winners at the Technology Product Awards are chosen based on votes cast by our audience of expert UK-based IT leaders. Winning, says Wes van den Berg - UK VP and GM at finalist Pure Storage - is a public endorsement of a company's activities.
Ahead of the awards e-book being published later today, we talked to van den Berg about Pure Storage's actions over the last 12 months, and the company's plans for the year ahead.
Who is Pure Storage?
Pure is a storage and data services company. That means we help companies make the most of their data by enabling them to manage, access, protect and analyse this critical asset. We work with private and public sector organisations globally to help them stop thinking about their storage. It may sound counter-intuitive for a storage company, but our goal is to make storage invisible. This is for those in charge of infrastructure who want it to run seamlessly so they can concentrate on other, more strategic tasks.
How are you different from your peers?
That's an easy question! We've been pioneering all-flash since our inception and have a big focus on customer needs, innovation and simplicity. Our solutions enable customers to consume technology flexibly, provide agility, are scalable and easy to use. All of this enables organisations to focus on what's important to them, instead of managing the day-to-day operations.
What is your proudest company achievement in the last year?
The last 20 months have been hard on everyone. I'm proud of how my team has delivered for our customers quarter-on-quarter during a pandemic. It's a cliché, but we've pulled together and adapted. We have so many happy customers and we've won more in the last year. It's a testament to the team's commitment, creativity and drive that we're in this position.
What are your plans for the year ahead?
We see three trends affecting customers. In the next year we'll be supporting customers by addressing three major market trends we see: Adoption of the cloud operating model everywhere; the rise of modern cloud-native applications; and the shift to modernising today's infrastructure with all-flash.
There's a continual increase in unstructured data, and companies like us need to help customers to store, manage and get value from this. We also see huge adoption of containers so we anticipate a key element of our work over the next year will be supporting organisations as they enable modern cloud-native applications built on containers. Finally, continuing to grow the UK business and helping customers and partners with the pivot to as-a-Service models will remain an overall goal for this year.
Why are events like the Technology Product Awards important to the IT industry?
It's always nice to win an award! External recognition is a marker that a company is doing something right. Especially an award that comes from a vote - winning is a public endorsement of what we do and how customer and partner focused we are.
