The legacy model for how enterprise storage vendors interact with their customers during product acquisition, ongoing management, and technology refresh is giving way to a much better model that is strongly preferred by end users. Pure Storage’s Evergreen Storage was the catalyst for this positive change, and competitive vendors’ response to the program not only validated its value but also improved overall customer experience (CX) across the industry. Competitors first tried to downplay Evergreen Storage as “just a program,” but in light of irrefutable customer affection for it, they have taken a new tack of trying to copy it. Some aspects of the program were easy to copy, but others were not. Program features, such as the Right-Size Guarantee, White-Glove Support, Capacity Consolidation, and Upgrade Flex, and the ability to comprehensively and nondisruptively upgrade installed, production systems to next-generation technology, without planned downtime or data migrations, continue to provide differentiating value to customers that is difficult for competitors to copy.
