Last week was a busy week for all of us here at Actifio. Four major events were going on: Oracle Open World, Data Driven Tokyo, Google Cloud Summit Seattle, and Pure Accelerate. I was fortunate enough to attend Pure Accelerate in Austin, TX and figured I’d share my thoughts on the event. This was my first Pure Accelerate so I did not know what to expect, but I must say was pleasantly surprised my experience there!
The first thing that impressed me was all the new announcements around the “Modern Data Experience”. The focuson as-a-service and hybrid cloud certainly resonated with me and align really well with Actifio. I found Cloud Block Store to be interesting and look forward to seeing how Actifio and Pure can work together to accelerate (pun intended) the technology and its adoption.
The second thing that really impressed me was the extremely high quality of the conversations we had at the Actifio booth. Typically at large technology shows like Accelerate, you get a lot of folks stopping by the booth for swag, raffles, and giveaways. Sure, this helps get scans, but the quality of these leads tends to be poor and not lead to conversion. At Pure Accelerate, I found the quality of conversations with people stopping by the booth to be very genuine and the level of interest in Actifio and Pure’s partnership was tremendous. Not only that, but the number of Pure employees stopping by the booth to learn more and share their excitement about our partnership was very impressive! I can’t wait to see what these conversations will lead to.
The third (and most impressive) thing for me was the engagement and interest in Actifio’s technology. A lot of booth conversations led to live demos on the spot, or a request for an onsite meeting at their organization. Many people came back to the booth after their initial conversation, either to learn more, ask a question, or bring a peer so they could learn about us. And I was BLOWN AWAY at the attendance for my theater presentation (“FlashArray Snapshots that Even Your DBAs and Developers Will Love”). Let me set the context. The theater session was on Wednesday (Day 3, the last day of Accelerate) at 3pm. From my experience at other shows, this is typically a time when things are wrapping up and folks are leaving to catch flights back home. So, I didn’t necessarily have the highest expectations on a huge turnout. I was severely mistaken – it was standing room only (2-3 rows deep)! It was incredible to see so many people in the audience, as well as the quality of questions afterwards was spectacular. Thank you to everyone who attended!
We were then treated to an up close and personal concert with Weezer. It’s amazing how you forget how many great songs they have. Kudos to the band and Pure for hosting a great appreciation event!
As you can tell, Pure Accelerate 2019 was an awesome experience for myself and Actifio. I can’t wait to see the results from the event, and look forward to seeing our partnership with Pure Storage grow!