Matt Kixmoeller, Pure Storage | Pure Accelerate 2017
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2017-06-14

Matt Kixmoeller, Pure Storage sits down with hosts Dave Vellante and David Floyer at Pure Accelerate 2017 in San Francisco, Ca

#PureAccelerate #theCUBE

https://siliconangle.com/2017/07/18/dont-big-data-small-scale-modernizing-cloud-flash-pureaccelerate/

Don’t do big data on a small scale: modernizing cloud with flash

A frequent issue for big data management is its immense, systemic complexity. With so many players involved, from developers to technology engineers, the labyrinthine structures to be navigated can seem overwhelming. This is a situation that Pure Storage Inc. has always been looking to remedy, according to Matt Kixmoeller, vice president of marketing and product management at Pure Storage.

“I’ve been on the adventure from day one — we always had a fundamental belief in simplicity. But as we started to shift products and started to get customer feedback, there was this lightning rod within our team all throughout engineering where people really understood the power of simplicity. And it … went from a belief to a religion, I would almost say,” Kixmoeller said.

He spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and David Floyer (@dfloyer), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this year’s Pure//Accelerate conference in San Francisco, California. (* Disclosure below.)

This “religion” has persisted to present day. “If you look at a lot of what we announced [recently], there continues to be a thread of simplicity throughout everything,” Kixmoeller said, referencing Pure Storage’s announcement of more than two dozen new software-led features added to its existing product line to fill in gaps and streamline data management.

Pure’s model of ease-of-use is intended to remove the burden of infrastructure-building and to allow developers to concentrate on its own areas of expertise. To take the “pain of the infrastructure away,” Pure Storage gives developers and engineers the opportunity to better elaborate the product, according to Kixmoeller.

Modernize flash, bring storage to the future
The key piece Pure Storage is using to exemplify this model is its patented flash storage and its derivatives, such as FlashBlade. To ensure compliance with the most recent innovations, the company is focusing on such software packages and integrating them with the most recent developments in tech.

“This was an opportunity to really flex our muscles around software, flex our muscles around [the Internet of Things] and [artificial intelligence],” Kixmoeller said.

A prime target for Pure Storage’s latest innovation, particularly given its massive data storage requirements, are cloud service providers such as Cloudera Inc. and Amazon Cloud Drive. “One of our biggest segments is really cloud providers. We see them increasingly not really looking at legacy options for storage. They want a modern storage fabric,” Kixmoeller stated.

This is truly a boon for Pure Storage, and it plans to move from the spinning drives of yesteryear to a purely digital analog. Since its inception, it has focused on assisting flash technology in trickling down to the end user, not to be retained as some proprietary invention. In the early days of information technology architecture implementation, Kixmoeller reminisces, it was Pure Storage that sought to make that happen.

“Our whole idea was, ‘Look, let’s not make it a Ferrari. Let’s democratize it for all.’ We think everybody deserves flash, and we did a bunch of work to try to mainstream it,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Pure//Accelerate 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Pure//Accelerate 2017. Neither Pure Storage Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)