Pure Storage

History

In October 2009, the company was founded as OS76 by John Colgrove and John Hayes. Mike Speiser of Sutter Hill Ventures was an early board member. It raised a $5 million series A round led by Sutter Hill. In August 2010, it raised another $20 million, led by Greylock Partners with participation by Sutter Hill. Scott Dietzen, former president and CTO of Zimbra (acquired by VMware in January 2010), and former CTO of BEA Systems, became chief executive in October 2010. In August 2011, the company announced an investment from the venture-capital arm of Samsung Electronics, which along with Redpoint Ventures contributed to a $30 million series C funding round. Vice president of engineering Bob Wood joined at that time from Omneon (acquired by Harmonic, Inc.).

In August 2012, Pure Storage raised $40 million in series D funding round led by Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi, along with existing investors. An investment of undisclosed amount from In-Q-Tel (associated with the US Central Intelligence Agency) was announced in May 2013. Another investment (round "E") of $150 million was announced in August 2013, including T. Rowe Price and Tiger Global Management.

In October 2013, EMC Corporation filed lawsuits against several former sales employees who left to join Pure Storage. A $225 million series F funding round closed in April 2014. Tim Riitters, a former Google exec, joined as chief financial officer (CFO) in August 2014.

On October 6, 2015, Pure Storage priced their initial public offering at $17 per share, raising about $400 million. It started trading on the New York Stock Exchange with the symbol PSTG.

FlashArray

Pure Storage released a flash memory product called FlashArray on August 23, 2011. Deployed in a data center, FlashArray is marketed to accelerate applications like server virtualization, desktop virtualization, database systems and cloud computing that required very high rates of random I/O operations per second. InfiniBand technology connected controllers, and Fibre Channel connected to server computers.

The second generation FlashArray, released on May 16, 2012, included new software and an enhanced data integrity fabric. It was promoted with higher resiliency, encryption with zero key management, a new web user interface, command line interface, and support for VMware's vStorage interface. In August 2012, the firm released new software features including iSCSI connectivity using 10 Gigabit Ethernet, snapshots, and integration with VMware vCenter.

Pure Storage used multi-level cell flash memory which has higher capacity, for the same price, than single-level cell memory, at the cost of increased wear on and reduced life expectancy of the cells. Using software such as data compression known as data deduplication, the firm markets the FlashArray to compete with traditional rotating disk arrays. The company estimated FlashArray required about 20% of the power and space required for traditional arrays. The firm's flash memory is packaged in shelves of solid state memory devices (SSDs), from two known suppliers, sTec, Inc. and Samsung.

Awards

In 2015, Pure Storage was awarded the best place to work by the San Francisco Business Times, in the large companies category. Pure Storage was named as silver winner in the Wall Street Journal 2012 Technology Innovation Awards. Pure Storage and Samsung won one of two awards for enterprise business applications at an August 2012 flash memory trade show. Pure Storage was selected for the Red Herring Top 100 Americas Award in 2012. Pure Storage was named one of 10 "hot emerging companies" by CRN Magazine in May 2012. Pure Storage was among the top 25 best places to work in Silicon Valley, of companies with 51-101 employees by the San Francisco Business Times. Pure Storage announced it was a silver winner of the Enterprise Product of the Year in Best in Biz Awards 2011.