Pure Storage claims its introduction of a ‘Digital Master Services Agreement’ for partners will help snuff out any channel conflict stemming from the rise of self-service.
The “100% channel-driven” storage vendor in March unveiled new self-service capabilities across its Pure1 storage management platform and Evergreen portfolio.
This was in response to the rise in the number of customers embracing a “self-service, cloud operating model”, a trend that requires “real special attention from vendors”, VP, EMEA & LATAM, Channel, Geoff Greenlaw conceded.
“Our customers have already said they’re moving towards self service. So the question is, how do we provide self service to a customer without alienating our partner community?” Greenlaw told IT Channel Oxygen.
“It’s historically been a big problem, as self-service – by default – means the customer is effectively buying direct from the vendor.”
Pure’s Master plan
Pure’s answer to this is the Digital Master Services Agreement, one of four shiny new partner capabilities it is unveiling at its Pure Accelerate event this week.
It will hand the partners the ability to opt in to the new self-service purchasing models announced in March.
“[The partner of record] can automatically attach margin to a customer quote and then that margin is fed back directly to the partner. As the partner’s customers transact, the partner has complete visibility and price control over that opportunity,” Greenlaw explained.
“The customer is getting the self-service options they want. But the partner is also getting margin-rich opportunity and is still involved in the transaction, while the customer has this true cloud-like experience through Pure Storage.”
“Like having an SE in your customer’s datacentre”
All four new capabilities are designed to make Pure easier to do business in this new buying landscape, Greenlaw said.
A new ‘AI-Powered Asset Management’ capability will help partners generate leads by acting “just like a sales engineer in your customer’s datacentre 24 hours a day”, the channel boss said.
“Our customers are using self-service today – they’re using Pure1, for example. They could get a recommendation within Pure1 that they should, or could, turn on snapshots to improve their cyber resiliency,” he said.
“Assuming the customer grants their partner permission to view that data, that recommendation is then visible to the partner, so they can have a conversation with their customer about enhancing their cyber resiliency. For the partner, it would also take their cost per gigabyte up, because turning on snapshots requires more storage utilisation. So they’re actually going to sell more storage out of the back end of it as well.
“Imagine how powerful that is as a demand generation tool for our partners.”
What else?
The final two capabilities unveiled are around partner intelligence and invoice management.
The former is designed to expose more upsell opportunities for partners, Greenlaw said.
“If I’m a sales director, I can see an individual sales rep’s quarterly bookings. I can see their win ratios, I can see what verticals they’re winning in, and where we’re having success as a Pure Storage partner. It’s then about leveraging that valuable information to figure out where to focus their sales campaigns,” Greenlaw said.
Pure Storage is sharing the Las Vegas stage with several vendors this week, including rival storage vendor HPE – which is wowing partners with a range of announcements around AI.
Does that mean the UK storage partners in attendance will have to shuttle between events?
“We’re not providing shuttle buses, put it like that,” Greenlaw concluded.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
