In relation to the interview I think there are some important points the CEO brings up for Pure Storage
“Magnetic is a bottleneck as the world moves to real-time analytics — creating lots of opportunities for flash to enable new applications in the analytics space.”
A thesis for investing in Pure is that they have a superior product that is necessary for the future compute mega trend. In order for deep learning and AI to achieve its potential the data that users posess has to be stored in a way that efficiently and in a way that meets the demand that these new speedy processors require. As Tinker and others have convincingly demonstrated (I believe) Pure achieves this and with the added benefit of being minimally disruptive of on going operations and being so easy to use.
“My prediction is that we will see a 50 percent decline in flash pricing in about three years and a 75 percent decline in six years”
“But the important thing to realize is that flash doesn’t actually have to be cheaper than magnetic disk for the full transition to happen — it just has to be cheap enough for folks to be able to justify the conversion in terms of saving power, space, cooling, and manpower, and for folks to understand the business upside in moving to flash. … That ROI equation already works for the vast majority of important business applications today, and we think the pivot for unstructured data applications will happen much faster than people anticipate.”
Through our discussions and research it appears likely that Flash is the future of data storage across all markets. Great news for all creators of flash. Except, is it? Anybody excited to learn that Pure’s CEO believes what they sell will be for 50% less in three years and 75% less in six years. That answers the question as to whether flash will be commoditized in the coming years. According to Pure’s CEO, you betcha.
This is where Pure’s Evergreen strategy makes me happy. The pricing reduction will mean wider adoption and a larger TAM and CAP for PURE. Why go legacy when it’s not much more to get the the new hotness that will score your better productivity and efficiency. With Evergreen, Pure in a way will be protected from and even benefited by commodization of Flash. Recurring revenue from a service contract will protect them from declining Flash prices while competitors suffer. And when it’s time to ship their customers the newest updates the flash they are providing them will be of a lower value creating an increase in value of that contract. Happy customer and happier margins.