Pure as-a-Service started as a 2016 pilot program in Australia, initially providing a flexible consumption model for block storage, Pure as-a-Service director of product and solution marketing JP Petty told iTWire.

That pilot was so successful that Pure launched the Evergreen Managed Service in 2018 and then added file and object storage, and block storage in public cloud.

In 2019, this became Pure as-a-Service. It wasn't, he emphasised, an accounting-based plan. Instead, it provided the same experience that cloud storage customers had become used to.

The latest development includes publication of a service catalogue with "transparent" pricing for storage whether it is actually delivered on premises or in the cloud, so customers pick the storage characteristics they require and Pure does the rest.

This is achieved though a combination of the Pure One management software that (among other capabilities) allows Pure to predict a customer's future requirements, and the non-disruptive Evergreen upgrades that allow the hardware to be replaced without interrupting the customer's applications.

Together, they allow Pure to offer elastic and scalable storage, and charge for it according to the capacity used.

Pure's platform also includes cloud management and API-based orchestration, Petty noted.

The Pure Service Catalog offers low entry points, as "cash preservations is incredibly important" to customers, especially in the current environment, he said.

The minimum commitment is 50TB per service tier, with the exception of the block capacity tier which has a minimum of 200TB.

So customers can start small, burst above that level to cope with seasonal peaks, for example, and then return to their usual level. This makes it particularly good for industries such as manufacturing and retail, Petty said.

There are four tiers of block storage – capacity, performance, premium (eg, for containers and test/dev) and ultra (for in-memory databases) – and two tiers of file and object storage (premium and ultra performance).

The other new addition is Full Stack as-a-Service. Sold through selected Pure and Cisco partners, this gives customers a consumption-based model for storage, compute, and networking.

The hardware is a combination of Pure storage and Cisco FlashStack, with multiple configurations based on Cisco validated designs.

For example, an organisation planning to run Oracle RAC might choose a configuration with eight compute nodes and 100TB of storage supporting more than 400,000 Oracle IOPS.

"Pure as-a-Service has achieved market maturity, having been available for more than two years as the first Storage as-a-Service offering from a major vendor," said Pure as-a-Service general manager Rob Walters.

"With the new service catalog and expanded offerings, we are once again leading the market in delivering the flexibility and transparency that customers are looking for in subscription services to accelerate their initiatives."