When Pure Storage assembled its partner advisory council last autumn, one member called on the vendor to not only listen but to hear to what its channel was asking for. The storage player subsequently acted on the feedback and rolled out an enhanced partner programme six weeks ago that demonstrated it had heard what they wanted.
On the wish list was improved profitability opportunities and enhancements to discount systems that meant partners were able to get quotes in front of customers at a quicker pace.
Geoff Greenlaw, vice-president of channel sales EMEA at Pure Storage, said the firm took on board the comments from partners and taken action to make their lives easier and more profitable: “We’ve revamped our reseller partner programme, and the primary reason for that was based on feedback from our partner advisory councils, which we’ve hosted across the globe.
“We hosted one in EMEA in London in September 2024, which all our top partners, CEOs, managing directors and general managers attend. They gave us direct feedback around the fact that there are competitive partner programmes out there that are potentially richer. We were asked to look at the overall profitability and margin profile of their businesses, which we have done.”
Greenlaw added that the programme operated around four key principles – partnerships, profitability, process and people – and enhancements it had made touched all those areas.
“We’ve enhanced the profitability and introduced a dashboard called Pure Partner Intelligence, which will enable partners to have more access to live customer data to make proactive sales engagements with those customers. We’ll also be relaunching our partner portal, now called Partner Central,” he said, adding that it had also increased enablement support on the people front.
“On average, our Elite partners should see two to three times improvement in their rebates compared with last fiscal year, assuming you do the same level of business and the same mix of business – and by mix, I mean Capex versus Opex or net new logo versus existing business.”
Greenlaw said that the company had to encourage partners to talk about profitability at the advisory council meetings and had a “hunch” that it needed to improve rebates to continue to support growth: “Our number one goal at Pure is to take market share, and the only way [to do that] in a 100% indirect model, 100% of the time, is to whet the appetite of our partners. We were proactive in our approach. We knew we had to do something – we’ve listened and taken action on it.”
Greenlaw added that the increased support around quotations has hit the mark with partners wanting to react quickly to customer queries: “A partner would always need to come to Pure for a quotation – it’s just the way our business has always run. What we’ve done in the new partner-facing portal is give them access to pre-approved discounts so they can gain far faster routes to market.
“They can get quotations far faster to their customers now than they’ve ever done before – and in today’s competitive landscape, getting your price in there first can really have a competitive advantage for you as a partner.”
Greenlaw said that the company wanted to make life better for its existing partner base and it was enhancing the programme at a time with clear market opportunities and a chance for its channel to take share.
“The IT landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace. At this moment in time, we’re seeing a major shift from traditional disk storage to all flash solutions – which is great for Pure, but that comes with complexity, and customers’ needs are continuing to grow, especially with technologies or solution areas like AI.
“Cyber resiliency is top of mind on everyone’s lips now and, of course, public, private and hybrid cloud environments. So, there’s a lot of complexity in our industry and, in this context, it became clear that our partners required a partner programme that is agile enough to help them capitalise on these trends.”
The vendor’s next partner advisory meeting is in May, and Greenlaw indicated the firm would be encouraging discussions on consumption models, focusing on its Evergreen One storage-as-a-service offering.
“Data is growing exponentially. We know that those storage environments are going to grow, and it’s very easy for the customer to ramp up the capacity that they have with Evergreen One versus just a traditional capex model,” he said.
Those turning up at the next meeting will be aware that Greenlaw and his team are listening and prepared to act on feedback. The response to the moves made since the last meeting has been overwhelmingly positive.
“One of the comments I’ll never forget, which was at the partner Advisory Council was, ‘Everybody listens, but very few people hear’, and the way they were saying that was ‘We really hope that you hear us and act upon that’,” said Greenlaw.
“That individual at the Advisory Council has already come back and said, ‘Well, you have over-delivered on what we expected you could achieve in such a short space of time since September last year’,” he added.