‘This is the most significant revamp in our history’ - Pure Storage updates partner programme with new solution focus and clearer rebates
Geoff Greenlaw breaks down the updates and how they help partners
Pure Storage has just made its “most significant revamp” to its partner programme yet, designed to make rebates clearer for channel firms and train them up on new solution-based courses.
That is according to Geoff Greenlaw, VP of EMEA & LATAM channel sales at Pure, who dissects the new updates for CRN.
The vendor reviews its partner track annually, with the last refresh made February 2024. But this latest rejuvenation is on a bigger scale.
“This is the most significant partner programme revamp in Pure history,” he says.
“The headlines are around predictability, visibility and profitability.
“Historically at Pure, because the partner programme was complex, partners weren’t sure what rebates they were going to get once they closed a deal.
“We’ve taken that away and it’s a lot more simple to understand.”
Greenlaw moves onto the ‘visibility’ point, which revolves around Pure’s newly launched partner portal.
“That will give the partner direct access to all their pipeline, all the rebates they could potentially earn against that pipeline, all the rebates they are due to be paid, and access to a new tool called Pure Realize, which is effectively an online proposal building tool.
“And then around profitability. The average is 2.6 times richer if you do the same business this year that you did last year, with the same mix of products and partner-sourced deals.
“Let's say you're selling some subscription that’s 20 per cent of your overall revenue, it will be 2.6 times better off for you as a partner.”
Greenlaw reveals the storage vendor is also moving to a two tier model for the first time, geographically.
Globally the tier one countries are the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and France.
“Some of those are the core EMEA countries, which break down into Zone A and Zone B. Everything else outside of the UK, France and Germany in EMEA is Zone B.
“While all the rebates are the same structure, the only difference is the technical certification requirements are slightly higher in the Zone A countries because they're bigger, we expect more investment of their time, and we've revamped a lot of the training material.”
Historically, Pure’s training material had more of a focus on products.
As part of this latest revamp, the vendor has switched to solution-oriented training to allow partners to develop use cases for Pure’s technology.
“The technology doesn't really matter. What we want to certify is in a solution area.”
Those key solution areas for Pure are hybrid cloud optimisation, AI-ready infrastructure, modern applications, and cyber resilience.
The company has also made changes to the programme around what Greenlaw describes as “the direction of Pure” towards its Evergreen//One and subscription technology.
“If you're selling Evergreen//One, it's a lot richer, and a lot more profitable for you to be selling than traditional CapEx.
“Clearly, all companies are moving to subscriptions, so we want to reward that behavior more than CapEx.
“We've also launched a new element to the programme called ‘competitive takeout’, which is effectively for displacement of any storage vendor. That's not targeted at one given vendor, but the rebates on that are very significant on the competitive takeout.”
Read on to hear why Greenlaw thinks AI technology is still in its infancy, and why Pure is shrinking its distribution roster...
AI still in its infancy
One of Pure’s highlighted high-growth markets was AI-ready infrastructure, however Greenlaw doesn’t see AI as ‘high-growth’ as its reputation makes it out to be.
“I think it's an overused word. I don't think people truly understand what they want to use AI for,” he says.
“A lot of our partners, especially our MSPs, are standing up AI infrastructure for customers to come and play with it.
“Understand what is the art of the possible in an environment before you invest in your own datacentre with AI technology.
“What that's doing is it's pulling through a lot of revenue for those MSPs, because they realise what they can do with it. They’re saying, ‘well, can we just buy that infrastructure? We've now deployed our data on here’, and so our MSPs are seeing a lot of uptake as a consequence of that.
“But I think we’re still in AI’s infancy. I'm just not sure all our partners are able to go on that journey, because the skill set is rare. It's very expensive to invest in because there's such a demand for those AI specialists.”
Downsizing distribution
Greenlaw reveals Pure is trimming its distribution roster within certain smaller European countries.
“It’s common that in a smaller country, why would you have three distributors?
“The whole ethos behind that is, I don’t want to peanut butter spread our revenue across multiple distributors. There's no value, and it's just a race to the bottom on price.
“I want to invest in our most invested distributors, those that have the skill set and the capability, specifically the pre-sales capability and the marketing capability in a given country.”