Pure Storage's recent hyperscaler ‘design win’ could be the death knell for disk storage

A new licensing deal between Pure Storage and an as-of-yet unnamed hyperscaler could precipitate a transformation in the enterprise storage market, according to Pure Storage CTO Rob Lee.

Flash storage has long been hailed as the successor to its spinning disk counterparts, yet thus far HDDs have clung on in the enterprise market. This could all change, according to Lee.

In November 2024, Pure Storage announced it had reached its first flash storage deal with a hyperscaler.

The hyperscaler in question is set to be revealed “soon enough”, according to Lee, who added this is the first of what the company hopes is a number of similar agreements with the other major industry players.

“We recently announced our first, hopefully, of many design wins with a top four hyperscaler who’s chosen our technology to standardize all of their storage, from their cheapest disk all the way to eventually their highest performance SSDs” he stated.

During an earnings call following the announcement, which caused Pure Storage’s share price to soar, Charlie Giancarlo, CEO at Pure Storage, said the deal could mark a turning point in the market, describing it as “the vanguard for flash storage providing all online storage in major hyperscale environments in the future.”

This could significantly shake up the enterprise storage market, Lee said, noting that the market for disk storage is incredibly concentrated on both the supply and demand side, hinting that one big move from a hyperscaler could have a major effect on the industry as a whole.

“There’s two suppliers of disks, and 60 to 70% is purchased by the top five hyperscalers. Just let that sink in for a second. So when you have a market that is that concentrated, if one of those buyers flips and stops buying disks and shifts over to flash, you can see what’s going to happen,” he explained.

“I think that’s going to be the biggest catalyst, the biggest nail in the coffin finishing the transition from disk to flash.”

Flash storage could be an unsung hero for decarbonizing hyperscalers

Lee’s comments came during a press tour of Pure Storage’s global R&D center in Prague this week. During a Q&A session, he told ITPro and assembled journalists the factors that brought the hyperscaler to the table included better reliability and performance.

The primary reason, however, focused firmly on the energy savings flash can bring compared to traditional storage methods.

Hyperscaler capital expenditure has been growing as they race to dominate the burgeoning AI market, but this has presented major challenges in terms of energy security, Lee noted.

Nearly all of the top hyperscalers now have projects to source clean energy to accommodate for soaring demand, with Google, Microsoft, AWS, and Oracle all signaling their approval for nuclear energy in particular.

With this in mind, Lee said Pure Storage has been working with hyperscalers over the last two years to both demonstrate and emphasize the benefits of flash storage in data center operations, adding that a single digit decrease in energy consumption could be enough to drive a wholesale transition to flash.

“These guys operate at such a scale that saving 1 or 2% in power overall is a huge needle-mover for them. By uptaking our technology or storage layer, they’re actually going to save more energy than building nuclear power plants.”