Innovation @ Pure Accelerate 2025
After five months at Pure Storage, I just attended my first Pure//Accelerate Conference. Pure//Accelerate is our annual gathering of esteemed customers and partners, where we learn from each other how to improve ‘everything data’ with advanced, performant, secure, and resilient storage. A major highlight of Pure//Accelerate 2025 was the announcement of the Pure Storage Enterprise Data Cloud. This represents the next generation of storage capabilities, helping organizations leverage their data for operational excellence and efficiency. Enterprise Data Cloud delivers a unified, AI-driven control plane—via Pure Fusion—that allows organizations to manage and govern data across hybrid estates with cloud-like automation, built-in cyber resilience, and global observability. With my focus on cyber resilience and cybersecurity, I found the cyber resilience announcements especially exciting. First, we announced an integration with Rubrik’s Security Cloud to deliver the first-ever near-zero RTO solution. Rubrik and Pure Storage now combine immutable snapshots with threat analytics for rapid, trusted cyber recovery. Second, we announced integration with CrowdStrike LogScale. Pure Storage and CrowdStrike now offer on-prem storage with LogScale for fast analytics, threat hunting, and secure log retention. These announcements were extremely well received by both customers and partners. Another innovation generating buzz was our new Pure Protect capabilities. At Pure//Accelerate 2025, Pure Storage unveiled enhancements to Pure Protect, advancing cyber resilience and disaster recovery with a layered architecture that includes secure snapshots, isolated recovery environments, and cloud-based clean-room orchestration. The solution introduces policy-driven automation to streamline operations and reduce dependence on professional services, while optimizing VMware environments for increased efficiency and cost control. These advancements aim to simplify recovery, accelerate response, and strengthen data protection across hybrid infrastructures. In summary, Pure Protect can serve as the control and automation plane for layered resilience. On that note, many of my discussions with customers centered around how to leverage SafeMode Snapshots for immediate return to operations following an incident—whether from a disaster, technology outage, or cyberattack. Coming from a cybersecurity background, I was genuinely impressed by our customers' security acumen. Their expertise goes far beyond storage architectures, protocols, capacity planning, and performance. Many demonstrated strong knowledge of preventative and zero-trust controls, along with a deep understanding of immutability and indelibility. There was also strong interest in logging, anomaly detection, and especially our integrations with SecOps and UEBA. I fielded many questions about Varonis, Superna, and CrowdStrike, and how these powerful solutions help safeguard critical data assets. Superna, a sponsor of the event, also had strong attendance and interest in their breakout session. Our data protection partners—Rubrik, Commvault, and Veeam—also generated significant interest and hosted well-attended breakout sessions. Customers were particularly eager to learn how our solutions integrate seamlessly with these partners to enhance the capabilities of the Enterprise Data Cloud through robust, automated data protection workflows. The combination of our high-performance storage architecture and Pure Fusion automation impressed attendees by enabling streamlined management, rapid recovery, and enhanced security for enterprise-critical data. These integrations reassured customers that they can rely on a comprehensive, scalable solution that supports evolving data protection needs while simplifying operational complexity. This was an impressive event that made me proud to be part of Pure Storage. Resorts World was a fantastic venue, the Pure Storage event team executed flawlessly, and the keynote presentations were outstanding. If you didn’t make it this year, be sure to join us in 2026 back at Resorts World! Learn more about the Pure//Accelerate 2025 announcements at: https://www.purestorage.com/accelerate.html