An IDC Business Value White Paper, sponsored by Cisco and Pure Storage

FlashStack Delivers Business
Value Through Simplicity,
Flexibility, and Speed
RESEARCH BY:Harsh Singh

Senior Research Analyst, Business Value
Strategy Practice, IDC

March 2021 | IDC Doc. #US47408621

Eric Burgener

Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems,
Platforms and Technologies Group, IDC

FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

Navigating this White Paper

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Business Value Highlights .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  3
Executive Summary.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  3
Situation Overview .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 4Flashstack from Cisco and Pure Storage: All-Flash Converged Infrastructure .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 6The Business Value of Flashstack .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 9Study Demographics.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  9
Choice and Use of FlashStack .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 10
Quantifying the Business Value of FlashStack .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 11
Improvements in IT and Storage Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Improving Business Operations and Results.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  17
ROI Summary .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 21
Challenges/Opportunities .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 22
Conclusion .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  22
Appendix: Methodology.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  23
About the Analysts .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 24
Message from the Sponsor.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  25

IDC Business Value White Paper, sponsored by Cisco and Pure Storage
March 2021 | Doc. #US47408621

2

FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

BUSINESS VALUE HIGHLIGHTS
Click on highlights below to navigate to related content within this white paper.

446%

8x morefive-year ROI

staff time spent on innovation-based
activities

72% reduced

37% more

total cost of operations

efficient help desk

8-month

77% improved

payback period

72% morestorage deployment agility

efficient IT infrastructure staff

97% reductionin unplanned downtime

17% moreproductive end users

45% moreapplications deployed$16.0 million

additional revenue gained/protected

Executive Summary
Converged infrastructure (CI) platforms, which include compute, storage, and networking
technology integrated into a single holistic solution, make it easy to quickly deploy
proven information technology (IT) infrastructure. All components in these systems aretested together by the vendors to ensure compatibility. As a result, the systems simplify
purchasing, deployment, management, expansion, and support. These are key reasons
why customers purchase CI solutions today. When these offerings include all-flash arrays(AFAs), the result is an IT infrastructure solution that fires on all cylinders for consistently
high performance, extremely efficient IT infrastructure (in terms of performance andstorage density, ease of administration, and lowered costs), high availability that hits the“six-nines” requirement, and a total cost of ownership (TCO) that is generally 50–80%
lower than the TCO of a comparably configured solution that uses hard disk drives (HDDs).
FlashStack combines Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers and Nexus switcheswith Pure Storage All-Flash Storage Platforms (FlashArrays or FlashBlades). Piecing
together compute, storage, and network systems along with management and application
software can be a complex process. Cisco and Pure Storage work together to help
customers achieve the best performance through Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs). CVDs
provide a blueprint to answer the most common questions, highlighting best practices
and offering step-by-step instructions for setting up a CI environment — thereby reducing
costs and deployment times.
As enterprises modernize their IT infrastructure, many look to converged infrastructureofferings. These solutions combine server, storage, networking, and storage infrastructure
software technology into a single SKU, ensuring out-of-the-box compatibility between allcomponents and making them fast and easy to deploy.

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March 2021 | Doc. #US47408621

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FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

A unified management interface, single point of support, and simple scalability into
the cloud round out the benefits of converged infrastructure. Enterprises with apreference for either Cisco server or Pure Storage array technology have been buying
the Pure Storage FlashStack converged infrastructure offering since 2014.
IDC spoke with organizations in a variety of vertical markets about how they areusing FlashStack to optimize their IT and storage operations. FlashStack is offered bya partnership between Cisco and Pure Storage and is a flexible all-flash converged
infrastructure solution that combines compute, network, storage hardware, andvirtualization software into a single integrated architecture. The stated value propositionof FlashStack is to speed time to deployment, lower overall IT costs, and reduce
deployment risk while reducing costs. IDC interviewed 10 organizations using thissolution. The survey data obtained and applied to IDC’s Business Value model showedthat study participants realized significant value with FlashStack.

IDC calculates that these companies will achieve average annual benefitsof $3.67 million per organization ($535,200 per 100 flash terabytes), resulting
in an eight-month payback and a five-year return on investment (ROI) of
446% by:Fostering improvements in IT and storage infrastructure staff efficiency
and productivity
Increasing the agility required for managing and deploying storage and computeresources while lowering the cost of operations
Optimizing application development and deployment thereby supporting business
operations and optimizing end-user productivity
Minimizing the effects of unplanned downtime to lower business risk and further
increase end-user productivity

Situation Overview
Converged infrastructure offerings combine compute, storage, and networking
technology into a single rack-mounted solution that is easier to buy, deploy, and manage
than information technology infrastructure that is integrated by customers themselves
working with different vendors. A converged infrastructure solution is deployed as adiscrete unit and administered from a unified interface through which compute, storage,
and networking resources are managed. All of the components are pre-certified towork together, and the entire solution is supported by a single vendor. Converged
infrastructure solutions not only are faster to deploy and much easier to work with but
also can result in significant administrative cost savings. Because of these advantages,
these types of solutions are very popular with enterprises. The converged infrastructure
market generated $17.8 billion in 2020 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate
(CAGR) of 4.0% through 2024 to crest $21.7 billion.
In addition to the ease of use and cost savings, one other consideration is often taken
into account by customers looking to deploy converged infrastructure.

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March 2021 | Doc. #US47408621

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4FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

Many enterprises qualify specific server and/or storage hardware for use in theirenvironments and build out infrastructure based on them. For many of them, they have
proven over time that the hardware meets their requirements, and they are enjoying
a customer experience (CX) that keeps them coming back. Established relationships
also often play a part, particularly for those customers that have really come to look attheir account team as a trusted provider. For example, customers that have a strong
preference for either the servers in the Cisco Unified Computing System or the Pure
Storage FlashArrays may naturally gravitate toward FlashStack since that converged
infrastructure offering is built around both of those.
Customers that have no prior preference for either of these two components (servers
or storage) will compare offerings from different vendors. When evaluating the storage
in converged infrastructure offerings, there are a number of factors to consider in cases
where the plan is to consolidate a mix of enterprise-class workloads. When evaluating
enterprise infrastructure, customers focus on performance, capacity utilization (i.e., data
reduction technologies), high availability, and value for the money as the top storage
purchase drivers. Storage management capabilities that enable data protection, security,and cloud integration also rank high.
To cover all of these areas, customers should look for these capabilities: hostmultipathing, thin provisioning, in-line compression and deduplication, dual parity RAID,
snapshots, encryption, quality of service, and replication technology as well as theability to support flexible consumption and new cloud economic models. Systems should
support nondisruptive operations covering failed component replacement, firmware
and software updates, and multigenerational technology upgrades as well as “air gap”
protection (against data corruption and ransomware attacks) and disaster recovery (DR)capabilities that include both stretch clusters and remote site recovery. Cloud integration
should include support for REST APIs, Container Storage Interface (CSI) (to provide
persistent storage to containers more easily), cloud tiering, and an ability to run thestorage operating system itself in the public cloud (on industry-standard hardware).
When workloads have any degree of latency sensitivity, all-flash arrays will probably be
the best fit. These systems can consistently deliver sub-millisecond latencies at scale
and are much better able to handle I/O spikes without putting performance service-levelagreements (SLAs) at risk. While solid state media may still be more expensive thanspinning disk media (i.e., hard disk drives) on a raw cost-per-gigabyte basis, AFAs haveoffered a better total cost of ownership for latency-sensitive workloads since 2015–2016.
Justifying Investment in All-Flash Arrays (IDC #US41646416, August 2016) explores this
topic in detail.

This IDC research document found that there were six key reasons why
all-flash arrays drove a better total cost of ownership:
A need for far fewer storage devices (to meet both performance and capacity
requirements)
Much lower energy and floor space consumption (due to the higher performanceand capacity density of solid state media)
Need for fewer application servers (due to the lower latencies of all-flash storage
that drove much higher server CPU utilization)

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5FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

Lower software licensing costs (due to needing fewer CPU cores)
Lowered administration costs (because of the order of magnitude lower latencies,
recurring storage tuning was no longer required)
Much better device-level reliability (which minimized time spent replacing failed
devices)This is not just a set of theoretical arguments; in 2019, AFAs drove over 80% of all primaryexternal storage revenue, generating $11.6 billion. Customers clearly “get it.”In primary research performed by IDC in 2020, survey respondents identified improving
IT staff productivity, streamlining infrastructure footprint, improving IT resource
utilization, and improving operational efficiency as the top reasons for converged
infrastructure deployment. These requirements can be directly translated into specificenterprise storage capabilities. Systems that are easy to deploy and manage help
make administrators more productive, as do APIs like VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols),
Container Storage Interface, and REST APIs that allow storage management features
to be integrated into automated workflows for tasks like storage provisioning, backups,
and recoveries. Given that most enterprises are moving in the direction of hybrid cloudenvironments, cloud integration capabilities are important as well.
New storage technologies like NVMe and triple-level cell (TLC) and quad-level cell(QLC) flash media increase the performance and capacity density of storage systems,
enabling smaller systems that require less energy and floor space to meet application
requirements. Data reduction capabilities like thin provisioning, compression anddeduplication, and space-efficient snapshots can all have a huge impact on theeffective cost per gigabyte of storage, which can vary significantly depending on
workloads and workflows. For NVMe-based systems (which can only use solid state
media), how the media is managed at the flash translation layer can have a noticeable
impact on performance, endurance, and cost. Together, these latter two capabilities canmake a large difference in how well storage performance and capacity resources are
utilized, promoting more compact and cost-effective storage infrastructure solutions.
And storage systems that are faster and easier to deploy, provision, and expand all help
improve operational efficiencies.

Flashstack from Cisco and Pure
Storage: All-Flash Converged
Infrastructure
Pure Storage is a $1.6 billion enterprise AFA vendor with a broad portfolio of all-flash
offerings that cover primary and secondary as well as structured and unstructured
workloads. The FlashArray//X line covers primary storage, the FlashArray//C addresses
tier 2 and other secondary workloads, and FlashBlade covers unstructured (file/object)workloads.

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FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

In 2014, Pure Storage collaborated with Cisco to create a converged infrastructureoffering called FlashStack. This solution offered customers all the traditional advantagesof converged infrastructure — ease of purchase, deployment, and management — built
around the differentiating capabilities offered by Cisco UCS servers and the Pure Storage
FlashArray. Both vendors have continued to refresh this offering with updated hardware
and software functionality, and the latest version of the platform includes the Cisco UCS
B-Series Blade Servers or C-Series Rack Servers, the FlashArray//X, integrated networking
from Cisco, and the integrated Cisco Intersight cloud operations platform. FlashStack Cisco
Validated Designs are available for a number of popular enterprise workloads, including
Oracle RAC, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP HANA TCI, and Red Hat OpenShift, as well as
critical enterprise environments like VMware vSphere, artificial intelligence and deeplearning, and virtual desktop infrastructure.
The FlashArray//X is an NVMe-based all-flash array (NAFA) available in five models, fromthe entry-level X10 up through the high-end X90. Its storage operating environment,
called Purity, is optimized for use with flash media (since these systems do not support
HDDs). Purity has been shipping since 2012 and, as such, is a proven, trusted enterpriseclass storage operating system supporting a comprehensive range of features. Thesefeatures include host multipathing, thin provisioning, dual-parity RAID, in-line data
reduction (compression and deduplication), snapshots, encryption, and quality of service.
Its replication capabilities include both synchronous and asynchronous as well as stretch
clusters (which the vendor calls ActiveCluster) and air gap protection. As a unified storage
system, the FlashArray natively supports both block- and file-based storage as wellas SCSI, Fibre Channel (FC), NFS, and SMB access methods, allowing it to deliver highperformance across both structured and unstructured data types and act as an efficientplatform for broad storage workload consolidation.
The FlashArray’s extensive storage management functionality gives customers theopportunity to design tailored high availability and recovery capabilities into theirconfigurations to meet a variety of SLA requirements. Through the vendor’s applicationintegrated snapshots and replication, storage administrators can design programs tomeet any recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) requirements.
Through its Pure1 cloud-based predictive analytics platform, the vendor keeps a runningmeasure of the overall availability of its installed base, which today stands at “five-ninesplus” (99.999%+) availability. Pure1 is an artificial intelligence and machine learning–driven
monitoring and management platform that performs predictive fault management, helps
manage systems in real time to meet defined performance and availability goals, andprovides comprehensive data to facilitate troubleshooting and help resolve issues faster.
The FlashArray is differentiated from alternatives in a number of ways. First, since it only
ever supported solid state media, it includes no HDD-based baggage in either hardware
or software. Instead of using off-the-shelf solid state disks (SSDs), Pure Storage buys solidstate media directly and builds its own storage devices. These devices, called DirectFlash
Modules (DFMs), support higher densities than off-the-shelf SSDs (the largest DFM is
49TB), allowing the vendor to build more compact systems that use less energy and floor
space to meet a given performance and capacity requirement. Other benefits accrue fromthis decision as well. When new solid state media becomes available, Pure Storage canget new storage devices based on it out faster than its competitors since it only has to go
through one “build” cycle instead of two, and this means its customers can take advantageof newer technology faster.

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FlashArrays also manage the solid state media globally instead of depending on disk
vendor flash translation layers that manage flash media at the individual device level. Global
management allows Pure Storage to manage the media more efficiently to provide better,more consistent performance over time; improve endurance; and reduce overprovisioning(to lower cost).
In addition to the FlashArray’s redundant design, which includes dual controllers as well as
redundant power and cooling, the FlashArray//X70 and //X90 both support a storage-class
memory-based caching tier. While a FlashArray//X using NVMe DFMs and a SCSI-based host
attachment (FC or iSCSI based) can deliver consistent 500 microsecond latencies at scale,systems configured with the Intel Optane–based DirectMemory Cache Modules and an NVMe
over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) host connection using FC can deliver 150 microsecond latencies at scale.
DirectMemory Cache Module–based configurations are often used for SAP HANA and otherin-memory database workloads as well as real-time application environments.
The FlashArray supports virtual infrastructure and cloud integration capabilities as well.
Pure Storage supports VMware APIs like VVols, VAAI, VADP, VASA, and SRM as well as cloud
integration capabilities like CSI, cloud tiering, and a REST API. A software-only version of Purity,
the FlashArray storage operating system, called Cloud Block Store, can be run in the public
cloud, giving customers a hybrid cloud environment that supports a consistent set ofenterprise-class storage management functionality that spans both on-premises andoff-premises environments.
Pure Storage covers its FlashArrays with Evergreen Storage. This program provides a numberof guarantees — for example, a 30-day money back guarantee, a 4:1 data reduction guarantee,
and a fixed maintenance pricing guarantee (at the component level) over the life of the system.
Flash media endurance is guaranteed, with the vendor replacing any failed devices for covered
systems at no charge, and Evergreen includes 24 x 7 support. For those customers that wantthem, Evergreen can also include “Free Every Three” (next-generation controller upgrades every
three years), “Upgrade Flex” (the option to move to next-generation controllers earlier thanevery three years with 100% investment protection), and “Capacity Consolidation” (the ability
to consolidate existing capacity onto denser storage devices to reduce energy and floor spaceconsumption with 100% investment protection). Hardware and software upgrades internal to thestorage array itself are and always have been nondisruptive, which allows customers to extend
the life of storage systems far beyond the typical four to five years. This program, along with theease of use of managing and expanding FlashArrays, contributes to Pure Storage’s impressive
CX — the vendor has published Net Promoter Score (NPS) numbers since 2015 and has thehighest published score of any external enterprise storage provider in the industry (a number inthe mid-80s).
Through the integration with Cisco Intersight, a cloud operations platform with modular
capabilities for advanced infrastructure, workload optimization, and Kubernetes services,
customers can gain the advantage of having one place to manage and orchestrate a fully
disaggregated datacenter solution like FlashStack.

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8FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

The Business Value of Flashstack
Study Demographics
IDC conducted research that explored the value and benefits for organizations in using
FlashStack as a converged storage and infrastructure solution. The project included 10 interviews
with companies that had experience with or knowledge about the platform’s benefits. During theinterviews, companies were asked a variety of quantitative and qualitative questions about the
impact of the solution on their IT and storage operations, business practices, and costs.
Table 1 presents study demographics and profiles. The organizations that IDC interviewed hada base of 9,720 employees with revenue of $5.44 billion. This workforce was supported by an
IT staff of 640, managing 404 business applications on behalf of 9,451 end users and a large
number of external customers (92,800). In terms of geographical distribution, seven companies
were based in the United States, with the remainder in Australia and Brazil. In addition, there
was a good mix of vertical industries represented including the healthcare, energy, government,
IT services, manufacturing, and media and entertainment sectors. (Note: All numbers cited
represent averages.)

TABLE 1

Firmographics of Interviewed Organizations
Firmographics

Average

MedianRange

Number of employees

9,720

4,200

65 to 45,000

Number of IT staff

640

165

1 to 5,000

Number of IT users

9,451

3,405

65 to 45,000

Number of external customers

92,8008,300

100 to 750,000

Number of business applications

404

150

20 to 2,000$5.4 billion$308.0 million$4.0 million to$21.4 billion

Revenue per year
Countries

United States (7), Australia (2), and Brazil

Industries

Healthcare (4), energy (2), government, IT services,manufacturing, and media and entertainmentn = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

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Choice and Use of FlashStack
The companies that IDC surveyed described their usage of FlashStack and provided a snapshotof their IT and business environments. In addition, they discussed the rationale behind theirchoice of the FlashStack platform. Interviewed companies cited several key decision factors
including improvements in deduplication rates and the ability of the solution to reduce hardware
silos and sprawl. Study participants also cited other factors such as ease of management, the“trusted provider” nature of the vendor partnership, and better overall total cost of ownership.

They elaborated on these and other benefits:
Better technology and deduplication rates (healthcare):“We chose FlashStack because of … how attractive the deduplication rates were and theguaranteed performance. No one would stand behind numbers like that. And Pure Storage
knocked it out of the park.”
Need for a modern infrastructure (media and entertainment):“Initially, when I took over, this environment was poorly maintained. All the hardware was endof life and out of support … . We went through a process of reviewing multiple solutions.
Initially, the reason for the change was that we were running out of storage with decreased
performance of applications for end users and an ancient DR environment.”
Avoiding disparate hardware (energy):“We choose FlashStack while we were refreshing legacy systems. Basically, dealing withdisparate hardware was the main reason why we went to Pure Storage with Cisco. Anotherreason was the ability to upgrade as needed.”
Ease of management (healthcare):“The feature set of FlashStack was amazing. I don’t have to mess with it. It’s set it and forget it …
you can create a 4TB volume without having to create LUNs. In fact, you don’t have to deal
with LUNs at all.”Better TCO and support (manufacturing):“The reasons we chose FlashStack were small file performance, cost of ownership, and overallvalue. I’d also say the vendor support structure and the overall nature of the vendor
relationship were key reasons as well.”Table 2 (next page) describes organizational usage patterns for companies adopting theFlashStack platform. These companies had a substantial flash storage footprint with a total datacapacity of 686TB. In addition, they were using an average of 185 FlashStack-supported businessapplications, constituting 45% of all applications in use (refer back to Table 1). Significantly, theplatform supported 97% of all company revenue-related workloads.

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10FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

TABLE 2

Organizational Usage of FlashStack
Average

MedianNumber of physical sites

93

4

Number of servers

63

22

Number of terabytes

755

450

Number of SSD/flash terabytes

686

333

Number of applications

185

81

Percentage of internal users
supported

91

100

Percentage of revenue being
supported

97

100
n = 10, Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

Quantifying the Business Value of FlashStack
IDC’s Business Value model quantified the benefits for organizations that have chosen
FlashStack to support their IT and storage operations. The survey data obtained from
10 customers was applied to this model to arrive at an array of quantified post-deployment
benefits. Using this methodology, IDC found that these customers realized significant value
for their storage infrastructure and business operations.
The use of FlashStack has supported more efficient IT and storage operations and increased
the overall productivity of the teams that managed those operations. Its use also enhanced theagility needed to deploy storage resources and lowered the cost of operations. Improvements
in IT infrastructure efficiency in turn served to optimize the work of the application development
teams while minimizing the effects of unplanned downtime and improving overall business
operations and results.

Study participants in a variety of vertical markets commented on these and otherbenefits:
Easier to manage infrastructure (manufacturing):“The biggest benefits are the ease of use, ease of administration, and the support modelFlashStack provides. We don’t have to touch it. They do all the upgrades. They are
responsible for it. The partnership with the support team and the account team is incredible.”

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11FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

Reduction in infrastructure spending (government):“The data reduction we get from FlashStack is infinitely better than what we had. There wasalmost no data reduction before so that means that now we’re buying a lot less storage
capacity. If we were using our previous solution, I think we would need probably two or threetimes as much because we’re getting a 3:1 data reduction ratio with FlashStack.”
Scaling up to meet business needs (healthcare):“With the amount of resources that we acquired in this purchase, we can do an emergency
spin up in minutes if needed. If we need to grow a product or application, we can do that withvery minimal thought. If we have to be fast and just react knee jerk, we can do that.
FlashStack gives us the agility to do all that.”
Solid performance improvements (healthcare):“We definitely see improved performance. To run some of our reports running on our oldequipment, it would take 50 minutes to an hour. That time went down to 4 or 5 minutes,
something like a 5x improvement. That’s only one example, out of many.”
IDC calculated that the total value FlashStack customers are realizing will be worth an annual
average of $3.67 million per organization over five years.

These calculations can be broken out further in terms of average annual benefits per
100 users ($42,000), per 100 flash terabytes ($535,200), and the following categories(see Figure 1, next page):
Business productivity benefits:
Greater agility and performance improves business productivity by optimizing applications
development and minimizing unplanned downtime. IDC calculates the value of theseproductivity benefits at an annual average of $2,358,000 per organization ($27,000
per 100 users and $343,700 per 100 flash terabytes).
Risk mitigation — user productivity benefits:
Deployment of the FlashStack platform results in fewer unplanned outages that can affectapplication performance and other business-critical IT resources that end users andcustomers depend upon. IDC calculates the value of higher end-user productivity at anannual average of $762,000 per organization ($8,700 per 100 users and $111,100 per
100 flash terabytes).
IT staff productivity benefits:
Deployment and use of FlashStack means that IT infrastructure and storage staff spend lessof their time allocating and managing storage resources when compared with legacy oralternative approaches. IDC projects that interviewed organizations will realize value throughstaff time savings and higher productivity worth an annual average of $504,000 per
organization ($5,800 per 100 users and $73,400 per 100 flash terabytes).
IT infrastructure cost reductions:FlashStack lowers the cost of operations in terms of both capex and opex. IDC calculates thatthe solution reduces these costs by an annual average of $48,000 per organization ($550 per
100 users and $7,000 per 100 flash terabytes).

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12FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

FIGURE 1

Annual Average Benefits per Organization
Total $3.67 million$504,000$48,000$762,000$2,358,000

Business
productivity
benefits

Risk mitigation
benefits

IT staffproductivity gains

IT infrastructure
cost reductionsn = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

Improvements in IT and Storage Operations
Managing datacenter infrastructure poses a number of challenges. IT departments are
increasingly looking at converged infrastructure as a way to minimize cost and complexity
by standardizing and consolidating applications and workloads. However, many converged
solutions still use inefficient disk storage that often can’t provide adequate performance orscalability or is plagued by significant downtime impacting end-user productivity.
Flash-based converged systems provide efficient operational advantages for the IT storageand infrastructure teams that manage them. The companies that IDC interviewed confirmedthat FlashStack fostered these efficiencies while ensuring the levels of high reliability
needed to keep business-critical applications available. Interviewed companies cited anumber of key benefits including ease of use and management, significant levels of costsavings, and the platform’s ability to free up staff to work on more strategic projects.

They commented on these and other benefits:
IT operations are more efficient (healthcare):“After we had the Pure Storage array, we formed a new company, with another medicalgroup. We were able to spin up 10–15 virtual servers on the existing hardware to meetthose needs without having to buy any additional storage or create LUNs. It probably
saved us days of setup time plus the time it takes to order the hardware.”

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FlashStack is easy to run (healthcare):“FlashStack helps amazingly well. The infrastructure is so sound and so reliable that people
don’t even think about it anymore. It’s like electricity in the wall, the way you don’t even think
about plugging in an appliance … .”Evergreen options save costs (manufacturing):“Looking forward, we avoid having to spend $3.5 million again in three years to upgrade
storage with a disruptive forklift upgrade. Evergreen lets us upgrade to next-generation
technology nondisruptively in our existing system. My point is that not only did we get much
more cost-effective storage than we had to save money now but we will avoid rebuying
everything again in three years, which will give us a lot of additional savings.”
IT can better support business needs (information technology):“We were able to repurpose three to four people. For example, two people were moved to theapplication team. Before, they were working alongside the application folks to troubleshootperformance issues, and now, they are actually part of the application team. This was
possible because they stopped having to deal with all the performance issues being reportedby the application team. Overall, those three to four people are now focused more on
business alignment.”
IDC looked at how FlashStack made it easier for IT teams to manage their infrastructure. Figure 2
quantifies these improvements. Because of the built-in features and performance of FlashStack,IT infrastructure staff were able to recoup 72% of the time required to run and manage various
aspects of their storage, network, and compute infrastructure.

FIGURE 2

Impact on IT Infrastructure Management
3.1 FTE
0.4

72% more

1.4

efficient IT
infrastructure
staff

0.9 FTE
Network management
Storage management

1.3

0.4

0.1

0.4

Compute management

Before FlashStack

With FlashStackn = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

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Figure 3 addresses the platform’s benefits for storage team efficiency. Deployment anduse of FlashStack is allowing IT storage teams to focus 50% less on keeping the lights on
while increasing the amount of available time to spend on business innovation and direct
support eightfold.

FIGURE 3

Impact on IT Storage Team Activities
50% lesstime spenton keeping
the lights on

About 8x58%

more timespent oninnovation

29%

Before FlashStack
With FlashStack

42%

5%Time spent on keeping the lights on

Time spent on innovation-based activities
n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

Implementing FlashStack has improved the agility of deploying new storage resources inpart because AFA-based arrays are easier to manage than legacy systems. In addition,
automated functionality improved operations such as provisioning and capacity expansion.
Study participants reported that improvements in the efficiency of IT teams increased agility indeploying the storage and compute resources required by application developers and line-ofbusiness end users. The number of hours needed by staff to deploy new storage was reduced
substantially (77%) (see Figure 4). In addition, the number of hours required by staff to deploy
new compute (including VMs) was reduced by 52%.

FIGURE 4

IT Agility Impact(% improvement)

Staff time to deploy new storage array(hours)77%

Time to deploy new storage array(days)

57%

Staff time to deploy new compute/VM(hours)Time to deploy new compute/VM(days)

52%
36%
n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

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Study participants reported that help desk teams benefited from the enhanced capabilities
offered by FlashStack. IDC quantified these benefits as shown in Figure 5. Because FlashStack
improved IT and storage performance and efficiency, IT help desk teams have fewer issues
they need to address, and when they do occur, they can more easily be remediated. After
deployment, help desk staff were able to address issues 37% faster. In addition, the numberof calls was reduced by 11%, while 29% less time was needed to address each call.

FIGURE 5

Help Desk Impact(% improvement)

Time savings for help desk staff

37%

Reduced time to address tickets/calls

29%

Reduced number of tickets/calls

11%
n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

Study participants also reported that FlashStack served as a cost-effective storage platformthat offered the benefit of long-term infrastructure savings. This was possible in part becauseof the ability of all-flash systems to reduce cooling costs and physical space requirements.
Figure 6 summarizes these infrastructure savings, calculated out over a five-year period.
The use of alternative flash or legacy converged systems would have cost 25% more overthat same five-year period.

FIGURE 6

Five-Year Infrastructure Savings

Cost of FlashStack/alternative environment$1,503,000

Before FlashStack

Comparable
environment
would cost
25% more over
five years$1,130,000

With FlashStackn = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

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Improving Business Operations and Results
For interviewed companies, the use of FlashStack improved business operations and results.
Enhanced storage performance led to better application development and deployment,
reductions in unplanned downtime, and an improved ability to meet the ongoing requirementsof line-of-business end users. Study participants in various vertical markets cited specific benefits
such as the ability to perform faster analytics and queries and to work on more strategic projects.

They commented on these and related benefits:
Better support helps increase revenue (manufacturing):“The organization has increased their revenue by 20%. It’s had a huge impact because what
they are seeing is an acceleration of order to cash. We’re able to get the order faster, process
it faster, and have happier customers because we get the equipment out the door faster andcustomers end up purchasing more.”
Better performance is important to the business (media and entertainment):“Looked at year round, the FlashStack environment is probably overkill for what we require.
However, we have a brand that’s very much recognized worldwide and the critical natureof our major event means we need a significant increase in performance. While our biggest
event is only two weeks of the year, it’s an important two weeks.”
Faster analytics lead to business opportunities (government):“Analytics are affected by FlashStack because we’re able to do queries quicker on the
database warehouse … . We could potentially make more money because online andmarketing people are saving time. They are able to pull reports quicker.”Time to work on more strategic projects (healthcare):“Our line-of-business applications require a lot of innovation to figure out how to navigate all
the new healthcare rules that come out on almost a monthly basis … . Now we can use a lotof innovation to work that system while trying to maximize our revenue.”
IDC quantified business operations benefits in terms of typical performance metrics that define
the success of those operations. Figure 7 shows that after FlashStack deployment, the greatest
improvements were seen in application performance (62%), reduced batch time runs (60%),
and faster analytical queries (48%).

FIGURE 7

Performance Metrics(% improvement)

62%

Higher application performance

60%

Reduced time to run batches

48%

Faster analytical queries
Faster business transactions

34%
n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

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As a result of total improved infrastructure performance, organizations are seeing a major
reduction in unplanned downtime events that can affect the applications and database
operations running on FlashStack. This improvement is enabled by the platform’s robust andconsistent performance along with high levels of all-flash availability. Table 3 quantifies thesebenefits showing that the number of annual outages were reduced by 90%. In addition, when
they did occur, remediation was accomplished 67% faster. These benefits combined to yieldan annual productivity-based business value of $781,500.

TABLE 3Unplanned Downtime — User Productivity Impact
Before/Without
FlashStack

With FlashStack

Difference

Benefit

Number of outages per year

6.2

0.6

5.6

90%

MTTR (hours)

1.6

0.5

1.1

67%

Lost productive time per organization
per year (FTEs)

11.5

0.4

11.2

97%

Hours per user of lost productive time
per year

2.3

0.1

2.2

97%

Value of lost productive time perorganization per year (based on FTEs)$807,800$26,400$781,500

97%

n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

Interviewed companies reported that with better-performing applications and databases and lessdowntime, their organizations were able to garner additional revenue. As summarized in Table 4,these reductions in disruptive events translated into additional annual revenue in the amount of$254,000.

TABLE 4

Unplanned Downtime — Revenue Impact
Business Impact — Revenue from Improved Performance
Total additional revenue per year
Assumed operating margin
Total recognized revenue per year — IDC Business Value model

Per Organization$254,000
15%$38,000
n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

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Study participants reported that FlashStack served as a cost-effective infrastructure platform
for their business applications and workloads. Factoring in the infrastructure savings describedin Figure 6, IDC evaluated the cost of operations over a five-year period by adding in additionalcosts for lost productivity and unplanned downtime. Operating an efficient converged storage
platform served to reduce IT infrastructure costs including those related to maintenance, power,
and space compared against alternatives. Figure 8 shows that aggregate costs for the FlashStacksolution totaled $2.2 million, representing a 73% reduction over the five-year period.

FIGURE 8

Five-Year Cost of Operations$7.88M
Cost of lost 		productivity,
unplanned 		
downtime$4,039,000

72% lower
over 5 years

IT staff 		
management		
costs
Costs ofFlashStack/alternative 		
approach 		with FlashStack$2.21M$2,342,000$944,000$132,000$1,503,000$1,130,000

Without FlashStack

With FlashStackn = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

In today’s application-centric business environments, being able to accelerate developer
productivity offers a critical competitive advantage. Study participants reported that they
were able to provide application developers with requested storage capacity faster and moreconsistently deliver the performance needed to support their tasks and operations. This resulted
in a 6% boost in developer productivity, which yielded an annual productivity-based businessvalue of $236,500 (see Table 5).

TABLE 5

Application Development Impact

Equivalent FTEs per year perorganization
Equivalent productivity value per year
per organization (based on FTEs)

Before/Without
FlashStack

With
FlashStack

Difference

Benefit

38.5

40.9

2.4

6%

$3.85 million$4.09 million$236,500

6%

n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

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Drilling down further on application development, IDC evaluated how FlashStack improved
the overall performance of developers by evaluating a series of metrics typically associatedwith their work. KPIs showing the greatest improvement included number of new applications
deployed (45%), life cycles for new applications (24%), and life cycles for new features (19%)(see Figure 9).

FIGURE 9

Application Development Metrics(% improvement)

Number of new applications deployed

45%

Development life cycle for
new application
Development life cycle for new features24%
19%
n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

Table 6 quantifies revenue impacts from better addressing business opportunities.
The total average annual revenue that accrued after deployment of the FlashStack
platform was $15,725,000.

TABLE 6

Business Operations and User Impact
Business Impact – Revenue fromBetter Addressing Business Opportunities

Per Organization

Total additional revenue per year

$15,725,000

Assumed operating margin15%

Total recognized revenue per year — IDC Business Value model$2,359,000
n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

Table 7 (next page) quantifies end-user revenue impacts showing an annual average
productivity gain of 17%. This resulted in an annual business value of $58,400.

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TABLE 7

End-User Impact
Enhanced User Productivity

Per Organization

Average number of users impacted

4.8

Average productivity gains

17%

Productive hours gained

1,569

End-user impact (FTE equivalent per organization per year)

0.8

Value of end-user time

$58,400
n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

ROI Summary
Table 8 presents IDC’s analysis of the financial and investment benefits related to study
participants’ use of FlashStack. IDC calculates that, on a per organization basis, interviewed
organizations will achieve total discounted five-year benefits of $13.2 million based on IT andstorage staff efficiencies, improved performance, better business results, and lower costs.
These benefits compare with projected total discounted investment costs over five years
of $2.41 million on a per organization basis. At these levels of benefits and investment costs,
IDC calculates that these organizations will achieve a five-year ROI of 446% and break evenon their investment in 7.5 months.

TABLE 8Five-Year ROI Analysis
Five-Year ROI Analysis

Per Organization

Per 100
Flash Terabytes

Per 100
Internal Users

Benefit (discounted)$13.2 million$1.92 million$150,800

Investment (discounted)$2.41 million$351,800$27,700

Net present value$10.8 million$1.57 million$123,200

446%

446%

446%

Payback (months)

7.5 months

7.5 months

7.5 months

Discount factor

12%

12%

12%

ROI (NPV/investment)n = 10 | Source: IDC In-depth Interviews, December 2020

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21FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

Challenges/Opportunities
For customers moving to all-flash storage for the first time, both administrators and end users
will need to reset their expectations. The faster provisioning, order of magnitude lower latency,
ability to handle I/O surges without missing a beat, simpler management, and dense workload
consolidation that does not put service-level agreements at risk are all positive changes.
As each constituency comes to trust FlashStack’s ability to consistently deliver better metrics
across all of these areas, there is the opportunity to redesign various processes to operate more
efficiently given the new storage infrastructure capabilities. FlashStack’s ease of use also frees
administrators from routine maintenance chores, allowing them to focus on more innovative or
strategic tasks that directly drive value for the business. FlashStack’s data reduction capabilities
alone enable IT operations, DevOps, and end users to rethink budget requirements to handle
data growth over time.
While FlashStack has been available since 2014, new Cisco and/or Pure Storage customers
may not be aware of its existence. The advantages of converged infrastructure are a provencommodity for many enterprises, and both vendors should continue to ensure that their separate
customers as well as the market in general are aware not only of FlashStack’s availability but alsoof the compelling economic case for its use as demonstrated in this Business Value white paper.

Conclusion
Converged infrastructure and AFAs started on separate trajectories and have single-handedly
created their own adherents. When Cisco and Pure Storage brought these two together with
the introduction of FlashStack in 2014, it represented the first converged infrastructure offering
built around a modern all-flash design. Adoption grew rapidly, and the two vendors have kept
the platform updated with the latest versions of their server, storage, and networking platforms.
It is clear from the research undertaken as part of this study that customers are reaping strong
performance, availability, efficiency, and cost benefits from using the platform.
On a qualitative basis, customers interviewed for this research noted faster, easier storage
provisioning that sped time to market for new products and services, a “set it and forget it”
administrative paradigm that overdelivered against performance requirements with no ongoing
performance tuning and nondisruptive multigenerational technology upgrades that saved
significant time, effort, and money by extending the storage product life cycle far beyond thatof traditional storage infrastructures. Administrators across all interviewees gave FlashStackhigh marks for ease of use, high availability, and infrastructure density (ability to more densely
consolidate workloads without any performance or management downsides).
On a quantitative basis, our research revealed strong economic benefits. Across the 10
interviewed organizations, they achieved a 446% five-year ROI, a 72% reduced cost ofoperations, a 77% improvement in deployment and provisioning agility, and a 97% reductionin unplanned downtime. Storage administration was 72% more efficient, freeing up 800% more
staff time to spend on innovation-related activities; end users were 17% more productive with
their work; and organizations gained an average of $16 million in additional revenue as a resultof faster, more efficient internal operations. These results speak for themselves and provide
a reliable indication of what new FlashStack customers can expect.

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Appendix: Methodology
IDC’s standard ROI methodology was utilized for this project. This methodology is based ongathering data from current users of the FlashStack solution as the foundation for the model.

Based on interviews with organizations using FlashStack, IDC performed a three-stepprocess to calculate the ROI and payback period:
Gathered quantitative benefit information during the interviews using a before-and-after
assessment of the impact of FlashStack. In this study, the benefits included staff time savingsand productivity benefits as well as operational cost reductions.
Created a complete investment (five-year total cost analysis) profile based on theinterviews. Investments go beyond the initial and annual costs of using FlashStack and can
include additional costs related to migrations, planning, consulting, and staff or user training.
Calculated the ROI and payback period. IDC conducted a depreciated cash flow analysis of
the benefits and investments for the organizations’ use of FlashStack over a five-year period.
ROI is the ratio of the net present value (NPV) and the discounted investment. The payback
period is the point at which cumulative benefits equal the initial investment.

IDC bases the payback period and ROI calculations on a number of assumptions,which are summarized as follows:
Time values are multiplied by burdened salary (salary + 28% for benefits and overhead) toquantify efficiency and manager productivity savings. For purposes of this analysis, basedon the geographic locations of the interviewed organizations, IDC has used assumptions of an
average fully loaded salary of $100,000 per year for IT staff members and an average fully
loaded salary of $70,000 per year for non-IT staff members. IDC assumes that employees
work 1,880 hours per year (47 weeks x 40 hours).
The net present value of the five-year savings is calculated by subtracting the amount thatwould have been realized by investing the original sum in an instrument yielding a 12% returnto allow for the missed opportunity cost. This accounts for both the assumed cost of money
and the assumed rate of return.
Further, because IT solutions require a deployment period, the full benefits of the solution
are not available during deployment. To capture this reality, IDC prorates the benefits on amonthly basis and then subtracts the deployment time from the first-year savings.
Note: All numbers in this document may not be exact due to rounding.

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About the Analysts
Harsh Singh

Senior Research Analyst, Business Value Strategy Practice, IDC
Harsh V. Singh is a Senior Research Analyst for the Business Value Strategy Practice,responsible for developing return-on-investment (ROI) and cost-savings analysis on enterprisetechnological products. Harsh’s work covers various solutions that include datacenter
hardware, enterprise software, and cloud-based products and services. Harsh’s research
focuses on the financial and operational impact these products have on organizations that
deploy and adopt them.
More about Harsh Singh

Eric Burgener

Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems,
Platforms and Technologies Group, IDC
Eric Burgener is Research Vice President within IDC’s Enterprise Infrastructure Practice.
Eric’s core research coverage includes Storage Systems, Software and Solutions, quarterly
trackers, end-user research as well as advisory services and consulting programs. Based on
his background covering enterprise storage, Eric’s research includes a particular emphasison flash-optimized arrays, emerging persistent memory technologies, and software-definedstorage. He is an active participant in the IT Buyers Research Program at IDC and blogs
throughout the year on the topic of Infrastructure and Data Management.
More about Eric Burgener

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FlashStack Delivers Business Value Through Simplicity, Flexibility, and Speed

Message from the Sponsor
Everything you need in a modern infrastructure platform.
Today’s digital business operations are delivered through a mix of traditional and modern
applications. Infrastructure must support this digital experience, but most offerings are either
too rigid or force IT teams to compromise on simplicity and resiliency to achieve cloud-likescale. You shouldn’t have to compromise. Ease of use, flexible support for any workloads, rapid
implementation, proactive maintenance, and a cloud anywhere experience can all be achieved
with the right platform.
FlashStack combines the best of breed technologies from both Pure Storage and Cisco toaccelerate your digital transformation, giving you a competitive edge.
FlashStack delivers everything you need in a modern infrastructure stack, from flexibility tosimplicity and speed. Run any application with the ability to start small, scale fast, and upgrade
non-disruptively. It increases resource and operational efficiency across your organization
by removing silos, reducing complexity and providing a cloud-ready experience. So don’tcompromise your digital business operation—FlashStack is everything you need in a modern
infrastructure platform.

Learn more about FlashStack

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Table of Contents25About IDC
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