The rain was hitting the streets like a drunk with a grudge the night Pure Storage decided it wanted to be somebody. Not just another schnook peddling flash boxes out of the back of a truck, undercutting the fat cats. No, these mugs had bigger dreams. They wanted the whole spread — data, AI, security, the works. A grab so bold it’d make the bosses uptown choke on their martinis.
First job out of the gate? This shiny number they call the Enterprise Data Cloud. Real smooth. Said it’d sweep away the mess; the silos, the sprawl, all the bent wiring in the city of storage. One slick platform, clean as a blackjack pulled from a silk pocket. And the sales pitch? “Manage data, not storage.” Cute. Short enough to fit on a cocktail napkin, sharp enough to leave a scar. The kind of line a dame whispers before she robs you blind.
But lemme tell ya, no one runs this town without muscle. The alleys are crawling with ransomware punks, lean and hungry, ready to shake down any joint dumb enough to leave the lights on. So Pure brings in the bruisers — Rubrik and CrowdStrike. Names that carry weight, the kind you don’t want to bump into in a dark hallway. Together, they’re selling cyber resilience — which, if you strip off the gloss, means keeping the cash register open while the bullets fly. Without ‘em, you’re deader than a stool pigeon in a cement overcoat.
Then came the glitter. Gartner, the bookies of the tech rackets, slipped Pure into their Magic Quadrant for the twelfth straight year. Not just on the board, but sitting “highest in execution and furthest in vision.” That’s like getting your name in neon while your rivals are stuck with cardboard signs. And the customers? They’re whistling sweet — a “4.9 out of 5 rating, with 98% willing to recommend Pure.” You don’t buy loyalty like that. You bleed for it, or you break a few knuckles until you’ve earned it.
Don’t kid yourself, the streets are still jammed with tough guys. Dell’s strutting like he owns the block, NetApp’s hustling deals out of a shoebox, and the cloud cartels tower over the joint like skyscrapers in the fog. But Pure’s working a three-act con: unify the turf, lock it down, then take a bow under the spotlights. It’s tidy as a safecracker’s grin and twice as crooked.
And me? I’ve seen a lotta operators come and go in this racket. Most of ‘em are selling plumbing — pipes nobody remembers till they burst. But Pure? Pure’s peddling a story, and it’s got enough swagger to make even a hard-boiled mug like me take notice.
Momentum. That’s the juice. And if they can keep pouring it, this town might just be theirs. If not? Well, they’ll still go down swinging — like a two-bit hood who knew the house was rigged but couldn’t resist rolling the dice one more time.
Erya Hammett is Unprompted's crime reporter. She is filling in for Asha Lang this week on the technology beat.