Exploring Innovations in Data Management with Portworx – SUSECON 2025

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone. We're here at Sussan in Orlando, sunny Orlando.

It's nice, almost warm. It's almost warm, almost not quite what I would expect, but it is only March. Um, you know, we've had a great day here at Scon.

A lot of customer, uh, interaction, a lot of partner interactions. Speaking of partners, I want to introduce a key partner of SUSE here at scon. It's the good full support works.

com, cloud native now, tech Strong, ITSM. You probably have heard of Port Works, but if you haven't, we're gonna tell you all about them. Let me first introduce you to our two guests on my far right.

Look, they're easy to tell apart, luckily on my far right, Andrew Custard right are right. And then my second kid, well, my near right, I guess that's how you'd say it, right Near right Neck. Two Stacey CROs, Cosby, Cosby Neck, Crosby.

That's Bing, Right? Or stills in that. Oh, that could be like David.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

We lost David. We're losing a lot of rock stars lately, but thank God we have Andrew and Stacy here. Stacy, why don't you introduce yourself first, a little bit about you to our audience.

Sure. I, so I run the, I run the sales team for Port Works by Pure Storage in the US as well as, uh, Asia Pacific and get to work with this kind gentleman. Hi.

So, I'm Andrew Custard and I run our global sales organization for Poor Works by Pure Storage. And, and I have the real privilege of working with Stacy as we try to help our customers align with great partners like SSON and, and, uh, and solve some of those next set of problems. Absolutely.

You know, I'm old, but I remember where we refer was Port Works by Pure Storage and it was just Port Works. Sure. But not everyone in our audience is familiar with Port Works or Pure Storage for that matter.

Who would like to give us the port work story? Go Ahead. Alright.

Yeah. Um, I'll give just like a, a little bit of it and I'll put it fine. And actually, you know what, um, since we're both old, you, um, I'll tell it in this story, you, so I'll, if you go back even four or five years ago, Kubernetes was something where you were working, working on like maybe individual applications, doing neat things in a lab.

Developers were trying to figure out, Hey, what could we do with this platform? I'd even say that there were some folks out there that were looking at it and saying, gosh, there's gotta be something easier than Kubernetes. Yeah.

Um, we're gonna find something else. Surely there's gonna be something else out there. And then the market kind of coalesced and got to a place where it said, all right, this is the platform.

This is the way that we wanna solve the next generation of modern apps in each of those elements. But once you started to do that, well, just like we saw with Open Systems, it was really great to build neat apps on open systems, but then you got to a place where you went, all right, I need to be able to run the bank on it, which meant I need to be able to have data associated with it. I need to be able to protect that data.

Uh, I need to be able to make an application highly available. I need to be able to solve all those things. Well, and in today's complex environment, you need to be able to solve those things on prem across multiple different cloud providers and across all kinds of storage and infrastructure.

So Port Works does, is make that really simple for the data layer. We provide a unified abstraction layer to manage data associated with Kubernetes environments that enable you to, well have one consistent experience, which means that you can use any storage, deploy it in any environment, and have the same confidence, you know, um, in your application's resilience and ability to scale regardless of where it's deployed or on what the infrastructure is. Now, listening to you, Andrew, I'm, I'm thinking back.

So it was, uh, it was DockerCon in, uh, in Austin. Sure. It had to be around 20 16, 20 17.

So 2016 we were looking at launching a cloud native website for text. com, we had Security Boulevard, but I felt Cloud native was, You weren't wrong. First.

We were going to go with something with the name Docker in it, but we couldn't because Docker was trademarked. Thank God we couldn't as it turned out. But I went down to Austin to Yon, uh, to DockerCon, excuse me.

And I came back and I told the teen year, now there's this thing from Google that they open source called Kubernetes. Yeah. And I really think it could be something big, but it's so damn hard.

No one's ever gonna use it, which is why I'm still working. Yeah. Not retired, but it's, and you know, Kubernetes did wind up becoming the defacto standard.

We actually called the Site Container Journal, but now it's called Cloud Native now. Right. I smartly moved the name.

Um, but one of the things that we see, and it's actually the theme, you know, CubeCon is next month in London. Well, me there, so will we, maybe we can, we can get back. We'll roll it what's for April 1st or the fourth in London.

But in July we're actually doing our yearly virtual event in cloud native. Oh, that's great. It's called Cloud Native now one for the road.

Nice. Because what's happened was Kubernetes and all of Cloud native, including the storage piece of it, have moved beyond the Hyperscaler public cloud. Yeah.

It's moved to the data center, it's moved to the edge, it's moved to bare metal. It's, it's everywhere. Right.

Cloud native, you don't even, you don't need a cloud necessarily for cloud native, which is kind of, Yeah. What people are really looking for is the experience, right? They're looking for that cloud experience.

Yes, they are. And Pure Storage, actually, their whole strategy is the enterprise data cloud, because that's what organizations are looking for. They're looking for cloud experience, whether it's across block file, object or containers.

And that's what Port Works gets to bring to bear as well. Absolutely. It's like the movie that one of the Oscars two years ago.

Is it anything anytime, anywhere? Yes. Right.

That's that's, that's exactly right. That's what people want today. Yeah.

And, you know, bring it here to Ichan 2025. That, that is kind of the theme here is that, hey, these folks, the good folks at suse are bringing their versions of Linux and Rancher and Kubernetes with AI and security everywhere. So one of the big, uh, kind of attention, you know, focus has been on sus SUSE partners, like Port Works.

Yeah. So talk to us about this partnership. Stacy, why don't you tell us?

Yeah, So the nice part about what's really worked well for both SUSE and Port Works is SUSE has this container platform that organizations can leverage. We have a container data management platform that allows then for you to have that reliable, reliable, consistent, uh, storage, if you will, software defined storage. And we've found that organizations are really looking for, they're looking for a point of view.

And we believe that it starts with what's the kind of architecture that you wanna build? Are you looking to get locked in or are you looking to figure out a way to provide a more standardized operating environment that can go across on-prem, that can be bare metal or virtual machine that can be in the cloud or at the edge. And together, we have a really strong best in class story around that.

And so it's been fantastic. And we're got joint customers already and a lot of, lot more that we're working on. That's fantastic.

I think you hit it right on the head though. It is that for the road anyway. Yeah.

Anytime, anywhere. Um, of course it is 2025 and, you know, it's, it's a great time to be alive in a lot of ways, especially in technology though, right. We have so much going on with ai, generative ai, agent, ai, ml ops, and AIOps, and you know, there's, there's so much happening.

And I, I think, you know, you talk to the people here and there's about 500 or so people here. People are trying to wrap their heads around. 'cause I just, it feels like things are changing.

All of us have been in the orca, but faster than ever. Yes. Right.

Specifically, as we sit here, where do you see that change happening? What are customers telling you? How are they future proofing themselves, if you will?

That's a great word. Why? I I, I do think that you've hit the nail ahead and actually even the, the sign behind it, and I don't know if it's, it's, it is visible to all the audience and everything else, but it says, choice happens.

And there's an element now where the best practices in architecture have, well, they've changed a little bit. You've gotta be able to build and design in a way that allows you to anticipate the unknown. That allows you to be able to say, gosh, you know what, there are dramatic changes that might be happening from vendors like Broadcom.

You know, um, or I'd say almost in many ways, you, you know, open ai, you know, uh, and the ai, all those changes represented that same type of challenge for infrastructure. 'cause it was, all right, well, do we have the right stack that allows us to be able to not just anticipate problems, but be able to navigate through 'em with as much agility, you know, on velocity and confidence, you know, as we can. And actually going back to what Stacy was saying before on that enterprise data cloud and the cloud operating model, well, what most people first went to, you know, the public cloud was because not they needed additional compute or additional storage.

They wanted that promise of velocity. They wanted that ability to be able to unlock the investments in developers that they had made. They wanted to be able to deliver applications faster and compete a little bit more.

Well, how they need to be able to do not only all of that, but they need to be able to do it in a way that's cost efficient, that's aligned to their business and maybe not just the public cloud providers. And they need to be able to then be able to unlock all of that capacity and potential in-house or in the cloud, and to be able to make those choices. Not for the problem that they can see today, but for the one that's around the corner now.

And so what I love about what suse Kahn's approach is, you know, what SUSE's approaches and, and the spirit of this conference is, it really is about make the best architectural decisions that give you the greatest returns, the efficiency, the performance, all those things. But also that allow you the flexibility to anticipate and adapt to change. Because those companies that are able to have that agile operating model, that platform model, hands down, they deliver better return.

They respond to everything from geopolitical change to crisis faster. Mm-hmm. They respond to architectural opportunities faster.

And depending upon the study you read, and I know that you see all the ones that I do now, they end up delivering about four, five x both either shareholder return or revenue that reduce the operating costs because they've really embraced that that architectural decision of building for choice, building for flexibility ends up unlocking a lot of things downstream. And that's what I think is really neat about this moment in technology is, is that all of a sudden, CIOs, CTOs, and CFOs are aligned in this conversation that says, all right, well wait a second. We don't wanna be locked in particularly to one vendor too much.

Yeah. We wanna have options. Those contracts have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, then maybe we wanna be able to go to our provider and say, we have the ability to make a change.

You know? And, and that's a, that's a unique moment and it changes, I think the definition of what best practice is as companies build out the next generation of infrastructure. No doubt.

No doubt. And, and sometimes it's not a question of saying, if you don't do this for me, I'm gonna go to vendor B sometimes. Absolutely.

Just vendor B does something better than vendor A. That doesn't mean you don't like vendor A anymore. You're still gonna do business with vendor A.

Absolutely. Sometimes it's about the right tool for the job. Yes, Absolutely.

And especially, and I'll say, you know, with all the changes that are happening in ai, you know, and you know, specialized cloud providers or the technologies that you're able to, to bring inhouse, the advancements are happening so fast. And the ability to capitalize on those needs that you need to be able to look at things and go, wanna be able to take the very best of breed, you know, uh, and be able to do it. And I'll do one just plug for the, the pure storage side of it, you know, which is one of the things that's really neat, 'cause I know that you knew Port Works from before, is Port Works really always started from, Hey, you know what?

We'll support any storage infrastructure and you know, any platform, any orchestration, all those things. And we still do today because Pure, as a company looks at it and says, we want customers to be able to have that choice, that capability. We wanna recognize the heterogeneity, but we also believe that, you know, what our products and any head-to-head competition, trounce everything else that's out there.

And so we're confident enough to stand on the scale of our engineering quality while, while backing that up by giving customers a choice to change. And that, that I think is what companies now are expecting from vendors because the error is different. You need to be able to put something in a cloud and maybe move it and take it out That that's a big discussion going on.

Right. It's finops the whole cost of cloud thing. And absolutely a lot of people are deciding It is.

Yeah. I read, I read an interesting, uh, survey the other day from a real estate company in the United States. 6% vacancy rate.

Yeah. It's, it's nearly impossible to go get space in a colo data center. So what they're building, well, everybody's pledging a hundred million here, a hundred billion there.

Before you know it, it's real money. But, you know, they're building out these data centers. I don't know if we have the electricity to support them even, but we're building, I mean, data center spaces at a premium.

Well, I'll tell you what, and one of the things that, that we're really proud of at Pure Storage as a company, and this goes from our approach to hardware, to software across the entire ethos, which is we really believe that architecting for the next generation of compute infrastructure, the problems that you have to solve has to be done efficiently. Yeah. Now, uh, and when you look at our technologies and architectures from DFM all the way through, we reduce, you know, the amount of, of power needed in a data center about sometimes 70, 80%, you know, really driving that cost.

We've shrink the amount of views all that rack space so you can recapture back up, you know, and we do that not just because it's, Hey, it's a better architecture and a better way of building solutions. You, um, it's a better world. It's also a better world, but that's exactly, yeah.

Yeah. And, And I don't know if you saw the, saw the caught the keynote today from, I think it was switch data centers. So the average house uses about two kilowatt, no, two megawatt, uh, elec, two megawatts of electricity.

The average, uh, Nvidia uses, I forget how many megawatts, but once you get to about 30, what's bigger gigawatt of megawatt megawatt gigawatts bigger. Yeah. Once you get to 30 or 40 megawatts, you could no longer cool it by air.

Yeah. You have to have liquid or, or something else. I mean, the, the energy, I mean, no kidding around the energy requirements here are just, well, I'll tell you what, there, there is a great story, and I think this is now probably about a, a year old, but, um, over in Singapore, you know, one of the data centers actually had a brownout and two major financial institutions.

And I, you know, I'll, I I won't name em, let's, you know, um, but that, that were, you know, were co-located in that data center. You know, not only did they have customer impact by it because the data center went out and was brown out because the power grid was overloaded. And so you didn't have any options there.

But then here's a couple of pieces to think about because they're in regulated industries, you know, the impact on those companies was really dramatic stupidness, they not, they, they were in a position where they couldn't make changes to their architecture or the designs in that data center, uh, um, for six months, as you know, that's a lifetime in technology. Yeah. Well, Generon I'll add a thing that that's one of the things we've also tried to be really thoughtful about, um, with Port Works, because particularly as you start getting into, um, applications like AI and Iterative and, you know, all the different ways that we're now changing the definitions of how, how, um, we want to use AI from the big large language models to now more specialized pieces.

But there's an element of that then that is, well, how do we do that efficiently? We need to be able to get better utilization out of the compute. And Pure's done a lot now with partnerships with Nvidia, and actually we just today announced, uh, the Pure Exit platform, which, you know, uh, is supporting a massive scale and a massive throughput.

But I'll talk about, uh, yeah. First just, um, an element with, uh, um, port Works, which is one of the things that we architected into Port Works that has been a part of the product, heck, from probably back when you first knew it, you know, um, is that ability to auto scale up. Yes.

Which means we're gonna use the minimum amount of storage that you need for the application, while always giving you the ability to auto capture more if you need it. You know? But that means that you're not provisioning a lot of excess capacity.

You're not wasting that data center capacity. You're getting better utilization and cost efficiency, whether that's in a public cloud or on-prem. And again, all of those elements, when you start stacking them together, get to not just a better level of operating efficiency, but something that gives you more capacity to solve more problems and allows you to put your head, you know, on the pillow at night feeling like, Hey, maybe we're not gonna burn down the planet right fast.

Well, there's something to the kids. Yeah. There you go.

Um, you know what, I, I just saw another survey on this, that the average Kubernetes in install is running at about 10% on average capacity. Yeah. 90% of the time it's, or 90% of it is, is unused for the most part.

You do have bursts, but it averages at 10%. I wonder, two things I want to hit on, and if you don't, if we have time, talk To you as long as you, So the first thing is, so I call it the primacy of data, right? There was a time it was all about the app, stupid, right?

We all, everything was about this application, that application, what you're doing with the app, where the app runs, where the app stored and, and data almost became an afterthought. Like of course there's data involved, but it's about the app. Where's my user interface?

I want my ui, I want my experience. Yeah. Right.

To be really good. I noticed it was around covid, maybe towards the end of Covid, people started realizing the app's great. It's About the data, But the data, the, that's the crown jewels.

Absolutely. Yeah. And, and not all data is created equal.

And if, one of the nice things about this digital transformation world we live in is we generate a lot of data. Yeah. But can we, should we keep all that data?

If not, what data should we keep? What data shouldn't we keep? What data should we keep close by?

What data should we store somewhere else? And the whole data became cooling it. Like right now, chips used to not be cool, but chips are very cool again, right?

No question. So data went almost from being a caboose to an engine. Again, how has this kind of manifested as you deal with partners like suer and you listen to companies that are here and joint customers.

How has that conversation changed? You both have been in this business? Yeah, a little bit.

I mean, when you think about just the massive amounts of data that, that we're creating, but then you think about all the, all the, um, all the power that's within it for the AI explosion and, and organizations. I mean, that's rich goldmine for them, right? They wanna mine that data.

It allows them to make different decisions around consumer habits and buying habits or things that they need to protect. You also have to think about GDPR and how are we manage, how are you keeping that data secure? And so while the app is still king, and I believe that the data is the queen, right?

Okay. And what the queen says goes right. And so spoken Like a real queen.

Uh, I mean, I don't know Alan, but, uh, and so I think that organizations really focus on how do I keep that data secure? How do I have the ability to make that data and the application affordable for all the things that Andrew talked about? You know, everything from compliance, oppor opportunity, financial decisions, um, crisis, all those kinds of things.

Uh, the data is the thing that if they lost that they are facing financial ramifications, right? Ruin the, you think about the customer, uh, experience and csat all those kinds of things. So, um, the data rules and Port Works gives you the opportunity to be able to, as Andrew said, lay your head down on the pillow because it's highly secure.

It's secure in transit, it anywhere you wanna put it, you don't have to worry about it. And it's the same experience in any of those environments as well. Yeah, I'll add it.

Add, yeah. So one say, and thanks, and I'll, I'll add a couple things, which is, is first as that the significance, as Stacy said of the data has grown, um, it's become something that we've seen in the market is now viewed to your point as the strategic Yeah. Asset of the company.

Although I wanna be clear, I'm gonna be sticking with Queen for as long as I, I I possibly can. We will rock you, but Hey, I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna say we, we need more Queens right now than, than that fewer Amen. Yeah.

Uh, and, and in that then that, that means that you've got something that companies now are looking at both from, Hey, how do we leverage it from the inside and the competitive advantage, but also we've gotta architect it differently now. And if you go back, back, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, going back to when maybe data wasn't that interesting, it was okay to have data centers or environments where, uh, it was a, a hodgepodge of different controllers. You, you know, you were doing different types of things with different types of da.

And I remember again, 'cause both of us have been doing this for a while, that there's this magic moment when, when Sun was in its sort of halcyon days. And it, you know, I remember where that, that story of, hey, you know, the network is the computer. And they would talk about how, hey, we have one common risk architecture going from, you know, a one U box all the way to that E 10 K, you know, um, and data now, you know, requires that same degree of simplicity of architecture.

You need that, that visibility to be able to take one approach because you've gotta be able to manage it differently now. And then you need a software layer that is then going to be able to reach out across those cloud installations of data and provide you with better insights, better management now, um, greater efficiency on it, things that Pure Storage does with things like Cloud box store, but things that also, you know, um, port Works and suse do with the way that we bring our solutions together. And, you know, um, as Stacy was saying, to be able to integrate that container strategy, you know, and then, you know, um, a container data management platform.

All, you know, for, for those who don't know, we were getting some walkthrough into attention. We were about to have a company, Well, lights. Yeah.

We were gonna have a special guest where one, those, they, they're always welcome. Yeah. I, but it really is, it's, it's just a thing that, that companies now look at and say, um, it's central to our business.

We need to be able to extract the greatest strategic value out of it. And that means that we have to think about it differently. You know, we've gotta think about it as something that, you know, um, we wanna have a best in class architecture around because it's a driver of what we're going to be able to do in the future.

It's not a cost center. It's a revenue generator. Absolutely.

Right. Alright, last question. And it's just between us, no one's.

So you hear at s Secon, your partners, you said they have some joint customers. Tell us the real deal. How is it working with Cuse as a partner?

How do you guys go to market? You're both in this sales organization. Yeah, yeah.

Don't hold back. So one, they're a, they're a great partner, you know, and, and I'll let, I mean, I'll let Stacy answer for, you know, the Americas and a PJ and each of those things. But I'll, I'll track for the little parts of the globe that I have.

You, you know, you know, outside of that. But, um, I think at the, at the simplest level, when you have a strong degree of alignment on who are we to a customer, you know, and what's our shared definition of best practice? They got, uh, um, they got a logo behind you.

There are a tagline behind you that says, choice happens. When you've got that degree of affinity, right At the heart of that, you've got the ability to go to customers and say, Hey, we work together. Well, we have a shared view.

Which means then that a customer can test that at the simplest level. They could test a, do we believe with your view of the future and that view of strategy. And if so, then we've got the opportunity to go to them and say, we've worked out all the kinks underneath the hood.

We've got a great community of partners that can help you be successful. Which means we can take the risk out of the decision. And since you mentioned kind of on the sales side, I always look at it as what you're asking for outside of just the technical stack is a customer's confidence that if they make a particular investment, they're gonna be able to achieve the outcomes on the other side.

Like that's really what it comes down to. Do we have like the resources and the people, are the benefits really good, but can we get there and how fast is it gonna take? Is it gonna be the big dig?

Is it gonna be California's high speed rail? Right. You know, is it gonna be that second avenue sub blurry line that we've been trying on?

It's never been really Right. Really a long time. And don't even start on Penn Station.

I mean, I'm, we're working on it, but, but when you get to those things, that's what a customer's asking is, if we partner with you, can you help us make this journey more effective with a higher chance of getting, getting to the other outcome? And Seuss is great because we share a vision that says, Hey, we want customers to be able to make the best possible decisions, leverage the best solutions, uh, um, and be in a position to anticipate what's coming around the corner. Yeah.

It's hard to add much to that other than, Well, I did go on for a bit. Well, Um, that's rare by the way. Um, just tease, not unusual, just teasing Nick.

Yeah. Uh, you know, the other thing is, it's a wonderful organization to work with. And you, you know, customers buy from, yes, they wanna make the right architecture choice and yes, they want the right tools or platform or those, but they also buy from people that they like.

And we get to walk into an organization, in organization with a team of people that we like. And so that's pretty great. Yeah.

There's always something to be said for that. I agree. Alright, Andrew, Stacy, thank you for joining us here.

We'll be back, uh, Wednesday and Thursday with a lot more, uh, coverage. Are, are we gonna be invited? Yeah.

Yeah. Are all of us gonna be here? I'd, I've been looking for someone to be co-host, so I, I think that's probably Stacy, you know, whatever you want.

Yeah. Um, but until then, this is Alan Shiva for Text Drunk tv. We're here at suse K Live.

Well, we're not live. You're watching this recorded. We were live when we recorded it though, but until tomorrow.

That's it for today. Bye-bye. Thanks so much.

Thanks.