Transcript
Well, did everyone have fun in Zouk last night? How's everyone feeling? Great. Amazing energy that we're going to carry here into day two. I got to tell you, Lynn, I was there. I stopped by for a moment, saw a few epic dance moves, yeah, yeah, okay. But more importantly, more importantly, I saw our community in action. I also overheard some conversations, when I could hear, around navigating the AI pressures that everybody seems to be having, but moving forward together also. So, the Everpeer community, that's what this week is all about. That's right, and yesterday we expanded our vision of EDC and talked about the why, the need for better data management in the AI era. Today, we are going to connect to the how. That's right, and so we're going to move from vision to actual blueprint. So, what is in store for today? We are going to dive into the tech architecture of our enterprise data cloud. We are going to have a fireside chat with Red Hat and CSX, and then, back by popular demand, fun with a bun with one of our customer and community leaders, of course, followed by everyone's favorite session, Cause Unplugged. And then, we're going to close with a super special guest. It makes me want to break out into that song. I won't, because we know I don't sing well, but Terry Crews is coming today. Yeah, that's right. So, let's get to it. We're going to walk through the EDC success blueprint and show how we turn policy-driven data management into an actionable plan to drive business outcomes. With that, please welcome our Worldwide VP of Systems Engineering, Nirav Sheth. Good morning. I think you all were at the nightclub a little too long last night. Good morning. How's everybody doing? All right. Now, some of you might remember that great 80s song, Nothing But a Good Time. And so, when you invest with Everpure, we promise you nothing but a good time. Now, speaking of a good time, what did you all think about yesterday? Pretty exceptional, pretty exciting stuff. And one of the key takeaways I had was to really recognize that the foundation of not just our architecture, but the foundation of everything that we do and the foundation of our business is underpinned by data. From an Everpure perspective, as Charlie laid out, what we want to be able to do is empower you to be able to take charge of your data. And how are we going to get there? Well, it starts with the enterprise data cloud. Our evergreen architecture keeping you ever modern. A unified data plane powered by Purity OS, enabling you to support all of your workloads. The intelligent control plane, Fusion, the ability to virtualize and operate at scale from the edge to the cloud, and all of the new software capabilities that we are bringing to life. This is how we're going to be able to enable you to break down all of the silos and put you back in charge of your data. Now, all of this is really, really cool, but I know when you're making an investment decision, it's not just about buying from us because we're cool. Well, hopefully, you know, you do factor that in as a part of your RFP process, but it's more than just about being cool. You're making an investment because you've got serious issues. You're working through. You might be thinking about, hey, with all of these supply chain constraints, my budgets are blown up, and I've got to drive more automation, and I've got to do more with the same amount of people. You might be thinking about, I've got to have a flexible and agile platform that's going to be best in class for VMware, but also is ready if I were to make a change later. You might be thinking about the cyber climate, and how do I restore a minimum viable business in the event something were to happen? And so, as we take that up a notch, all of that ultimately ties to business outcomes you're seeking as well. It's not just about the technology. Thinking about VMware optionality or accelerating your data pipelines for AI, that's all about agility. Thinking about the restoration of a minimum viable business, it's all about risk reduction. When you think about, how do I do more with less? How do I expand my estate without investing in more people because my budgets are blown up? That's all about efficiency. And so, what I'm super excited to announce today, and it's something a little bit different than what we've done in the past, is what we are calling the Enterprise Data Cloud Success Blueprint. Now, historically, we've armed you with a lot of things. We've armed you with reference designs, validated architectures, configuration guides, and so much more. I saw Eric Knapp in here from Cisco. We've got FlashStack with AI, just as an example of that. But what we want to do is take that up a notch. And now, what we want to be able to arm you is with a structured methodology that enables you to tie these technology investments that you're making into how you can enhance your risk map posture, how you can drive unparalleled efficiency, and how you can drive and introduce more agility into your environment than ever before. And not just at those high levels, but specifics, people, process, and technology. So, if you're thinking about risk, how can you constantly have compliance across your environment despite the moves, adds, and changes of your data? If you're thinking about efficiency, perhaps you need to think about energy efficiency. Perhaps you need to think about automation. If you're thinking about agility, not just agility at a high level, but specific capabilities within agility, such as getting ready for AI. Now, how are we going to make all of that come to life? Again, Charlie talked about breaking the silos and putting you in charge of your data. The Enterprise Data Cloud gets you there, and the Enterprise Data Cloud success blueprints is the structured methodology to bring that all to life. And so, what are some of the specifics we're going to be making available to you? It starts with a self-assessment. A confidential self-assessment where you can go through and evaluate across all of these areas and understand how you benchmark against best-in-class. And it's confidential, so we need you to be honest. Not like me when I did my DMV license renewal. I might not have been completely honest about my weight, but that doesn't help anybody in this self-assessment. Needs you to be honest. Then, we're going to arm you with blueprint guides, playbooks to help you evaluate, how do I get from where I'm at today to where we want to go? And customized to your business, on-site, dedicated workshops where some of the brightest minds in the organization at Everpure will come to you and help you build out a multi-year plan to get to where you want to go. Now, I'm not just excited about all of this because I had a double espresso right before I came on stage. I'm excited about this because we've been working and piloting this with customers around the world. So, an example is a great customer that we worked with in Europe, major manufacturer. We're able to sit down with them, go through this approach, and our champions were able to present to their CISO and CIO. And now, their CISO and CIO understand that this isn't just a technology investment. It's going to enhance their risk, and it's going to enable them to drive gross margin expansion. And so, now we're on the path of transitioning 80 manufacturing sites that they have around the world away from legacy onto Evergreen One. So, I know many of you want to get your phones out and multitask, so I'm giving you permission. Get your phones out. Take a photo of this QR code, and we can get started right now. If you're interested in learning more, take a snap. We'll get you the self-assessment. We'll get you the guides, and we will schedule that dedicated, customized workshop focused on you, your needs, and your outcomes, and help you build a multi-year plan. Thank you very much, and I hope you have a great rest of the event. And now, a couple of sponsored videos. Thank you so much, and I look forward to seeing you Marricco's Pharmaceutical Products and Products. Marricco's Pharmaceutical Products and Products. To the technology leaders building the future, the rules are being rewritten in real time. Every decision is critical. This moment demands a trusted partner. Nutanix delivers an open and secure software platform ready for enterprise AI. One seamless experience anywhere your business runs. So when it matters most, you're ready. One platform, one experience, only Nutanix. Hi, all. I'm back. Thanks, Nirav. That was fantastic. I hope that you all enjoyed hearing about the blueprint and how we're really helping customers build out their enterprise data cloud. So the EDC approach is all about building a foundation that really handles change and what's coming next. And so I know many of you are on this modernization journey already. And so I want to shift a little bit, though. We're going to shift gears, and we're going to talk about how to do this in a modern virtualization setting. So I'm really excited to introduce our next guest, Greg Muscarella, who is our general manager for Everpeer Portworx. And he's going to be sitting down with Red Hat VP of software, Joel Jackson, and lead senior product manager at CSX, Erics Graybill. And so before we welcome that out onto stage, please get a little bit more background on CSX with this video. This is CSX Redefined, a 200-year-old story in the making, standing at the forefront of innovation and efficiency. With powerful momentum, we're pushing the boundaries of what's possible in freight transportation. Backed by our proven operating model, our commitment to excellence is fueling every decision, every mile, and every customer interaction. Delivering innovative strategies that aren't just about moving goods, they're about moving industries. With cutting-edge technology and a relentless pursuit of efficiency, we're setting new standards for the future of transportation. 23,000 strong, 20,000 miles of rail, 26 states. Connecting customers, communities, and culture. Our vast and enviable network is the backbone of countless supply chains, ensuring that essential goods reach their destinations on time, every time. Our mission is toward profitable growth through teamwork, strategic investments, and a focus on sustainability. We're not just enhancing our bottom line, we're building a robust future for our customers, stakeholders, and partners. CSX, we're pulling for America. All right, well, welcome, everyone. All right, all aboard the virtualization journey. Well, listen, customers are looking for a single platform that can run their AI workloads, their virtualized workloads, and their container workloads. And Everpure and Red Hat have been partnering for years to deliver that consolidated platform. So I'm very excited that I'm joined by two very special guests today. I've got Eric Graybill from CSX. Now, Eric brings decades of experience navigating multiple waves of infrastructure transformation, and he continues to evolve the. and he continues to evolve the platform at CSX to adapt to what's next. I'm also very pleased to invite, or to have Joel Jackson here with me on stage. Joel from Red Hat brings a very broad market perspective. He works with a lot of organizations across a lot of industries as they make key infrastructure decisions. So I want to start with Eric here. Eric, can you tell us a little bit about your modernization journey and how you're thinking about it? Yeah, thank you. Great to be here, and thanks for the opportunity to share a little bit about CSX's story. So we already are on our modernization journey where we've migrated about 80% of our applications onto Kubernetes OpenShift specifically, so containers. And those applications run both in the cloud and on-premise in our own data centers. So as we look to virtualization, I said 80% are moved to containers. We have 20% left running on legacy VMs. So as we looked, our priority was simplification and flexibility. And we had that experience, over 10 years of experience with OpenShift. So we didn't want to have disconnected stacks to manage. We didn't want to have to retrain our staff and a whole new pane of glass, a whole new application. So one operating model across VMs and containers really just made sense. We also wanted a practical transition path that we didn't have to big bang move everything at one time. And we have moved successfully quite a bit of it, but at our own pace, we can move those remaining 20% onto the OpenShift platform. And then we have, if we ever need a mix of between cloud and on-prem, we can, that flexibility, as well as the reliability that we've come to know from OpenShift. That's a broad ecosystem that you operate across. You know, we all understand trains. They're very, very easy to get. We see them all the time, but we don't really have a good understanding what it takes to keep those trains running. Can you tell us a little about the workloads that you actually run behind the scenes to keep them going? Yeah, we support more than 400 applications, and they're things that you might not be thinking about. They're mission-critical applications. So I'll give you an example of our Tier Zero workload, something we call PTC, Positive Train Control. And it's not just us that call that. That's a federal requirement. But things like 20,000 sensors that are all along every track that we have that are measuring sound, vibration, and heat temperature off of bearings and axles off of the train. And PTC ensures the safety of where we're running, that if something goes wrong and it starts to heat up, signifying a problem, we might have a derailment, or even if we just stop getting data from those sensors, the brakes are literally applied to the train. That's the safest thing that we can do. So it really comes down to that it is critical that our infrastructure, that where we're hosting our applications are resilient and reliable. That's why a resilient data architecture is central, meaning that we have to have something that's enterprise-ready like Red Hat OpenShift. And so it was just the logical next step to do our virtualization there as well. That makes a lot of sense. Joel, let me turn this to you a little bit. What are you seeing more broadly in the enterprise? Are you seeing this desire to run all these different types of workloads on one platform? Yeah, I think what Eric said is, well, first of all, thank you for having us here. It's a wonderful partnership with you guys, and we're very honored to be here with you. But what Eric described, I don't think it's unique. It's a new blueprint for our customer base, and I think most of enterprise IT. They have this environment that's fragmented, like you said. Cost of running them continues to rise, and that's why we want to give them this architectural freedom across a hybrid cloud environment, and that's become the priority for a lot of our customer base. So that kind of covers the compute layer of things, like my applications that are jumping, but what about the data side of things? Yeah, Red Hat, we try to meet customers where they are. I think, Eric, you already were an OpenShift customer. They want to run VMs natively on the OpenShift platform. They got VMs and containers, and now AI applications landing on those. So yeah, it gives them a low friction, high velocity starting point. Now, you said on the data side. Yeah, the data layer, if your data's still trapped in a legacy silo, your modernization strategy will certainly grind to a slowdown or a halt. So that's why the relationship that we have with you guys and Portworx is just so critical. So Portworx delivers the data services needed to keep those applications protected, and we give you an OpenShift platform that's consistent across those applications. So when you're running tier zero applications, like Eric said, workloads, it can stop operations immediately if they, and we have a long history with you on PTC. But look, you need more than basic storage, right? You need a unified data platform that can span infrastructure, eliminate these silos, and ensure applications stay protected. Our joint solution together, especially with a single pane of glass, with Portworx directly integrated into the OpenShift console, huge for us. And I think our customers both love that joint proposition together. Yeah, we just released that integration, and actually announced it at Red Hat Summit. So that sounds really good, Joel, but there's a lot of moving parts here. How do enterprises get started down this journey? Well, we try to make it simple. This is not a simple, we try to make it simple, but if you're moving a massive fleet of applications with a lean team, like Eric said, you need a predictable, repeatable migration plan. And that's exactly what Red Hat and Portworx are trying to build, and we have built with some very key customers. Resources for you, we have the migration toolkit for virtualization. We have joint reference architectures, hands-on labs, and we have consulting experience when customers need more guidance. Thanks, that sounds like a lot of resources there. Eric, let's look at how you made this decision. What are the considerations that you put in place? How did you decide to move to OpenShift and Portworx? Yeah, so we really had, it was natural for us to choose OpenShift because we had so much of our applications running on there already. But the difference between running containerized OpenShift and VMs on OpenShift, data is really the key there. It might be nice to have a persistent volume to offer to an application for containerized, but it's an absolute requirement for a VM, that is the VM itself. So we did a POC with Portworx and with Red Hat, and they walked us through the procedure. We tested a couple different scenarios, and that was really important. And I will say that the decision to go with Portworx and OpenShift for running the VM was because from basic running local disk with ODF, compared to running Portworx in Pure as our backend storage was a 10x difference. I mean, so we tested all of those different types of creating VMs, migrating VMs from a legacy platform, and migrating VMs for HA within the cluster or cross-cluster. But really the difference for us was to have, bring our expertise and our experience. We have a lean team. We only have two full-time employees working on OpenShift, and we're able to do that because, like we said, now that's in the console, we can basically, once it's set up, it manages itself. We can add nodes, we can move things around, and we don't have to be storage experts. I'm not the storage expert, I'm the Kubernetes guy. All right, it's amazing that you accomplished all that with just two team members as well. I think that's pretty incredible. Well, listen, we're just about out of time here. So to wrap up, if I can just get one sentence from each of you, I'm gonna start with you, Eric. What piece of advice do you have to this room full of IT experts of what they should do to get started or think about as they're getting, thinking about getting started on this journey? Yeah, I would highly recommend the consulting service that when we bought our licensing of Portworx, they offered like a white glove consulting service, and it really went above and beyond our expectations. They really know the questions to ask that you don't even know to ask yourself of what you're gonna be using the environment for, the types of VM workloads, all of those things so that you're not painting yourself into a corner, you're designing it from day one. So I highly recommend that consulting service that they offer. Sounds like good advice. Joel, any words from you? Yeah, I think it's the same theme, right? Start with a platform and a data strategy that brings VMs, containers, and now AI workloads together from day one. So you can focus on what comes next. It's a very agile methodology that we try to bring to the customer base. Well, that's fantastic, guys. Sounds like you guys are set up for success. I wanna thank you very much for joining us here. So thank you very much. 감사합니다. Banking is 24-7 At this major bank, virtual machines make sure of it. But the bank was ready to evolve by moving VMs and containers side by side. So they trusted Redhat OpenShift Virtualization as their modern platform. Now one platform does the job of two. Savings are in the millions. And the bank is free to grow. Turns out when your VMs can move forward, your business can too. Keep your options open, Redhat. Oh, you don't get money back though, I'm sorry. Back, a special segment. Now for those of you viewing online or who haven't been here last year, we have something we call fun with the bun. Which is a special spotlight of a community leader. And this segment is really about highlighting one of you and the amazing impact that you have every day transforming not just your business, but also your community. So I'm excited to welcome Charles Shepard, Senior Systems Coordinator at St. Elizabeth Healthcare. And he's gonna be in conversation with our very own Nikki Armstrong around his career journey and the role Everpure has played in his success. Please welcome Charles and Nikki. Hi. Welcome. Thank you. All right, Charles. Well, welcome to fun with the bun, our annual podcast here. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate you. It's an honor. Thank you. So, you know, you, this is a story about healthcare transformation at scale. And, you know, it's a 24-7 business, obviously, where downtime is never an option. Complexity is the enemy, for sure. And, you know, you have small teams to accomplish, quite frankly, one heck of a lot. And so, you know, you joined St. Elizabeth's Healthcare in 1997. You've seen so much of that organization grow, really from like a family-like hospital with two facilities to now more than 12 hospitals, or six major hospitals, I should say, and 12,000 employees. And so, you know, clearly you had a part in that growth. And so let's go back to 1997. I'd love for you to kind of walk us through that journey. How has your role evolved? And, you know, what have you learned through leading technology in that kind of growth? So back in 97, when I started, I was on help desk and just running, fixing PCs, installing PCs. That grew into Novell administrator, group-wise administrator, backups, and then to storage, ultimately. But in that small team, really what we learned was is that to be able to manage those large systems is you got to have simplicity, a single pane of glass. That was really driven into our team by our previous director who retired not too many years ago, but he was a good mentor. And we found that simplicity using Pure and EverPure. I love that. And you've been in storage for more than 15 years now. You've probably, I know you've worked with just about every major platform out there. And so, you know, much of your time has been essentially working as a one-person, you know, one-man storage team. And so, you know, I have to imagine this is an environment that never sleeps. So walk me through, what does that operational burden actually look like for you? So we have a small team. There's nine of us that deal with servers, storage, backups, our Epic. But we're really focused on one piece. So I have guys that help me out, but normally we have to call each other if there's an issue. And that takes time from family, from vacations, always taking a laptop when you're out of town. It's a real drain on outside life. Yeah, I believe that. But at some point, there was a fundamental shift in how you spent your time. And I feel like you and I have talked a lot and it went from a firefighting to, I call it freedom. And, you know, I love how you've managed to keep the lights on, but also how this is now showing up in your everyday life. So can you talk a little bit about that and how it's impacted you personally? Right, so having the simplicity, the single pan of glass, and then obviously the availability of Pure, EverPure. I don't have to worry about the systems being down. I'm not as worried about doctors calling, saying we're not getting performance. I was actually able to go to my niece's graduation, not get called last year. That was the first time not being called on vacation. Yeah, absolutely. So time back with family is the biggest thing, but it's also taken stress off of me. And it's given me the ability to start learning and taking time to investigate pieces that I don't normally touch, like automation. And I'm on partially on the security team now to protect our data with other tools. So those are things that it's opened up time to be able to investigate. I love that because, you know, these are the moments that you can't get back. So I'm so glad that we enabled you to go and be at your niece's graduation and not get a call. Were you nervous though? Were you like, why is my phone not ringing? Yeah, there's always a little bit there in the back of your mind going, what's gonna happen this time? In 2012 I was actually able to go to Alaska. I got called while I was in on on In 2012, I was. the boat. So this has been the first few you know yeah you're now enjoying vacation which is awesome. Well we've seen growth at St. Elizabeth's and the storage environment kind of happen in parallel and so you've gone from managing a couple of ever pure arrays to a much larger footprint and so how you know how are you able to scale from two to where you are today and you know I don't want to let the cat out of the bag but you and I have talked about moving to an all ever pure footprint and so talk a little bit about that. Why are you so confident about the plan this year? Hopefully by the end of next year we'll be all ever pure. We've got a large NAS that we're trying to migrate to Flash Blade E and it's not it's not a technology problem it's a legal problem so maybe I can get you to help me with that. I can help. I know people. It's a statement of work problem but you know early on in my career with storage it was always a forklift migration. Yeah. So you had to plan that and then you're spending six months doing that migration. We don't have to do that anymore with with ever pure. We have in the last 10 years we've done over a hundred and fifty purity upgrades without downtime. That's amazing. Ten years of runtime. We started on MA50 and MA20 and we're now all X90 R4 with not an ounce of downtime to do that. I love that. Well and you're literally saving lives. You don't have time for downtime. I'm not saving lives but the system is there to provide. The other piece is just that it builds trust with the organization. When we started doing upgrades yeah we had to do them in nights and weekends but as they got more and more successful our change board was they liked the idea of having me do the upgrades especially a purity upgrade during the day when our team is there that can respond if we need to and then it's easier to get a hold of support and the support team for ever pure has been amazing. Awesome. Thank you so much. Joe Pinto you heard that right. All right. So obviously technology has played a huge role in your own growth but but also you and I have talked a lot about a different force that has been just as important and it's the people around you. And I'd love for you to share with our audience a little bit more about what that looks like. You've gotten some peak certifications which I love but you've also engaged with the broader ever pure community. So how has that actually enabled you to become a stronger technologist and a stronger leader. So early on in my career when we started first started storage now ever pure employee Doug Robertson was a contemporary at another hospital in our area and we would get together to talk about issues that we were having successes. What are you looking at for backups. What are you looking at for storage. Where are you struggling. And that community really helped me learn. I didn't necessarily learn great by just sitting in a class and listen to an instructor go through slides but being able to talk to the community is a big piece of my learning skill. So pure has been able to help me or give me the opportunity to lead a pug in our area in greater Cincinnati. So that's something that I have reached out to and embrace to try to lead the community and get more people around me talking because selfishly it's the way I learned. So I get more out of the pugs than than I think I give. But it's it's very helpful. Well I am. Are there other. Are there people out there in the Cincinnati pug group. Anybody out there. Who's it. Did I heard a yes. So you know you should you should join this pure user group if you if you have not already. But you know you didn't just benefit right. You you have given back. I think you're being a little bit more humble than than you need to be. Thank you for that. And so as a small token of our appreciation we want to give back to you because I heard that you don't have any ever pure new ever pure swag. So this is for you. So you might want to take a look at that. And while he's opening that up I want to encourage anybody else who look at that. Look at that. Thank you. Thank you. We need more community leaders like Charles and so for those of you out there that are interested in either leading or even perhaps just joining because you're going to learn much like Charles has. Please snap the QR code that is up on the screen here. We'd love to have you part of our pure user groups. And now Charles I'm going to throw some other crazy stuff out. So I like to ask really off the wall questions. We're going to with a rapid fire last year. So OK. You know what Mike was up against. All right. What is a job title in tech that doesn't exist but should. I'm going to go with director of it's not storage his fault. Every problem. I love that network or storage. I was thinking like chief token budget officer because I need to do that too. So. All right. What. Oh what animal would make the best CIO. We just got a new CIO in the last couple of years. So I've seen how busy he is. I'm going to say an octopus. Got to have all those arms to touch everything. Smartest creature in the ocean too. I did not know that. Yeah. All right. OK. Get comfortable being uncomfortable because that's how you learn. Don't be afraid to fail. I love that. Awesome. Well Charles it's been a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for being not just a wonderful customer to Everpeer but also one of our community leaders. And with that folks we are going to start recognizing our customers who are pioneering what is possible with Everpeer. So if you give this a moment we're going to roll a video and we'll come back out and do some awards. Thanks Charles. Every year a handful of organizations don't just build with our technology. They use it to change everything. This year we're proud to recognize the winners of our 2026 accelerator customer awards. These categories honor the organizations that redefine data transformation cloud AI data resilience sustainability and community. These aren't just awards. This is a recognition of the impact you make not just to keep pace but to accelerate what's next. To begin the award presentations please welcome Chief Visionary Officer John Cos Call Grove and Nikki Armstrong. All right. Good morning everybody. What an honor to be here with you today to accelerate the convergence point of where bold thinking and the power of data ignite what's next. So at Everpeer we really believe that true transformation isn't about technology itself. It is driven by visionaries and those are individuals and organizations who don't just keep pace but they're really ready to make the quantum leap ahead. And so today we honor those customers whose courage turns bold ideas into real world impact. And each year these winners have used they've used Everpeer as a platform to move faster to think bigger to serve better and to secure meaningful advantage for their organizations and all of the people who rely on them. So without further ado let's recognize our 2026 winners. So our first award is the North America Breakthrough Award and that recognizes an organization that's confidently charging forward transforming a foundational system with visionary leadership in innovation. The award winner has embarked on a remarkable modernization journey and they are literally laying the tracks pun intended for what modern infrastructure can become. And so we're proud to present the 2026 Breakthrough Award to CSX. And Eric Graybill. Come on up. Eric Graybill is here to accept the award on behalf of CSX. So sure. All right. Thanks Eric. All right. Financial services industry. It is evolving fast and trust is obviously built on resilience. So the next winner is creating the foundation that helps millions of customers securely manage and achieve their financial goals. So Scott Hendershot is here to accept the 2026 Everpeer Data Resilience Hero Award on behalf of M&T Bank. All right. Our next winner is defining the future of cloud native telecommunications demonstrating profound leadership by building an open hybrid cloud architecture that powers the nation's 5G network. So for achieving unmatched agility and efficiency in building an open cloud first infrastructure we're proud to present the 2026 Everpeer Cloud Champion Award to AT&T. Unfortunately they're not here today to accept the award so we'll celebrate with them at a later date. All right. At the heart of Everpeer is community. And so our next award honors an individual who embodies the spirit of that community and has built a tremendous culture of connection credibility and camaraderie through sharing mentoring and giving back. And so I am particularly proud to present the 2026 Everpeer Community Ambassador Award to Charles Shepard of St. Elizabeth's Health Care. Well done Charles. All right. So let's give it up for our award winners one more time. We are celebrating customers who are not just adapting to change. They are really actively defining what comes next. So thank you to all of our winners. Thank you for leading with vision. Thank you for pushing boundaries. Thank you for showing what is possible when innovation is matched by your courage and resilience and trust. So these are a powerful reminder of what the community can achieve when we move forward boldly together and raise the bar. So let's keep going. Let's keep building and let's keep accelerating together. All right. Thank you. And now we are going to move on to the next award. And that is the one that I know you've all been waiting for. Cause unplugged. So please watch the video. Can I have a word. What is it Diane. I'm busy with my manuscripts. We don't need any more manuscripts at the Red. But how else will we transcribe the data pipelines. We need something a little more modern. So we're using Everpeer. It automates data management in real time. The Guild of Scribes must hear about this. Archimedes send word. Also this is a fire hazard. Okay. So now they'll finally let me say something in this session. The first thing I'd like to thank all of the customers and all the partners for coming and joining us here. You know, everyone at Pure tries to work incredibly hard to help you improve your IT infrastructure, help you do a better job, help you do it in a simpler, more easy fashion. And we appreciate the trust you've shown in us. And we intend to continue working incredibly hard to deserve that trust and to make things even better for you. So thanks to all of our customers and all of our partners. And if you're not a customer or partner, but you're a prospect. Talk to somebody else who is already a customer and find out what you're missing out on. go back to something that Charlie was talking about and the journey we're on. A number of people have talked to me about our change from pure storage to ever pure. And in a sense, it's continuing the journey we've always been on. When you give us data to store, in order to store that data the best way, we have to know about the data. We have to know about the future. What is that data? How are you going to access it in the future? How often? What sizes of access? What are you going to access with what else? And if you want to build the greatest infrastructure on the planet, that's what you have to have, that knowledge of the future. Well, we can't have that, and you don't have it really. Nobody knows the future. But we started out building FlashArray and FlashBlade, great storage infrastructure. We're going to keep working on that. As we have an increasing focus on data intelligence and data management, we're not abandoning what got us here. We're going to continue to work really hard. We have a lot of engineers, and a lot of effort, and a lot of cool things. You saw some of them yesterday. You can see them over at the hub on improvements we're doing to that storage infrastructure. But what we're really now doing is focusing a lot more on understanding what's above that infrastructure, understanding your data better. Data intelligence will help us tell you, what are you actually storing? Where are you storing it? You can optimize. Just knowing even things like how many copies of the data that you have. Where is it? It helps you understand your risk. It helps you comply with the rules you want to have. It helps you set simpler rules. And so we started out at the infrastructure layer, and we're just continuing to go higher and higher up to help you build the best infrastructure possible and to make your lives as simple as possible and as easy as possible. We started out with an incredible focus on making one array, one storage product really simple and easy to use. Now we're focused with the enterprise data cloud and with Fusion on fleets and trying to make those as simple and easy as possible. In the same way that you sit there at home and you walk into a room and you can turn on the light switch and you know exactly what's going to happen, you go around your office and you go into some of the conference rooms that have really complicated lighting and nobody knows how to turn the lights on properly, nobody knows how to get them set. Oh, I want the lights by the screen here dimmed and everybody goes and futzes with it. Think of how many meetings you go into where people spend the first five minutes trying to get the AV set up right. And you never do that at home because you know your system and it's simple. That's what we're trying to do with your fleets, trying to let you manage the entire thing simply, easily, with a surety of knowledge. And it's a journey that we're going to be on for several years. So next year and the year after at Accelerate, you're going to see a lot more about the enterprise data cloud, a lot more about data management, a lot more about data intelligence. Because it's a journey that will take us five, 10 years to get to where we consider it done. And then we won't even consider it done, we'll still go and improve it. And it's something that people have been trying to do in this industry for a long time and they've been unable to do it. The tools that we bring that enable us to do it are a combination of a few things. One is incredible agility, right? You think about the all flash systems we've built and the combination of evergreen with the plug and play hardware updates and agility that that gives you. The ability to move things around easily. You look at what Chad was showing the other day about non-disruptively migrating your storage to offload to balance your load. All of you that have five arrays, 10 arrays, 20 arrays, you know that you're always looking and saying, oh, this one's more heavily used than that one. You'd like to get the whole thing evenly balanced. We're giving you the tools to do that and to do that non-disruptively. The ability to have, or I should say the agility that you have, that's one of the key things that enables you to really use the data management and data intelligence tools we're going to develop to create a great infrastructure. The other thing that's really valuable here is the ability to use AI, right? One of the things that really attracted us to OneTouch was getting away from the army of programmers you needed to understand every application and every piece of data in order to make that happen because then you're always behind the curve. We can now use tools like artificial intelligence to help us do this. And that's why now is the time that we can finally make the real benefits of data intelligence and data management happen. And that's going to be our main focus for the next several years. So with that, I hope everybody has a fantastic day and a great rest of your time in Vegas. And I'd like to welcome Lynn back to the stage. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was a perfect exclamation point on where we're headed. To our virtual audience I want to thank you again for spending these two days with us at Accelerate. At this point, this is gonna officially end the live stream of Accelerate. Thank you again. And I hope you feel inspired and equipped and ready to accelslate impact in your business. And we look forward to seeing you either on the live stream or in Vegas next year. Thank you.
