Analysts, and we're excited to have Pure Storage with us today. From the company, we have Rob Lee, Chief Technology Officer. In the audience, milling about, is Paul Ziots. So if you have any other questions, you can reach out to Paul after. Just quickly before we get started, let me read the Pure statement. "The statements made in these discussions, which are not statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements based upon current expectations. Actual results could differ materially from those projected due to a number of factors, including those referenced in Pure Storage's most recent SEC filings on Forms 10-Q, 10-K, and 8-K." So with that out of the way, thank you, Rob, for joining us. Thanks for having me, Paul. Yeah, David. So let's pivot a little bit from what we were gonna talk about. So obviously, you guys reported earnings last night. And I think from my feedback last night from investors and from the call and from talking to the company last night, I think investors want to kind of understand the demand environment. I know that's not necessarily your direct purview day to day, but let's start there. Like, what are you seeing from a product versus subscription perspective? 'Cause I think that surprised some investors last night, clearly. And what do you attribute sort of that mix or that dynamic to today? I know on the call you talked about maybe it's not macro, but you know, we've heard from other companies, it certainly sounds like maybe macro might be a contributing factor. Maybe we'll just start there. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when we think about the demand environment, first of all, you know, we see robust demand. We see robust demand generally across the board. We called out a couple of areas in the portfolio, certainly FlashBlade, just a record performance. The E family has been tremendous. And then certainly a lot of the dialogue and really the focus has been just the significant outperformance even of our elevated expectations around Evergreen// One, right? Our subscription and consumption services. So then I think the question becomes, hey, so, what do we believe is driving the, I would say, excess or increase in demand for the subscription and consumption services relative to perhaps the more traditional buying models? And I think you have a couple of factors there. I think, number one is, you know, as we've said, really over the last several years, we believe this is where, we're able to deliver the most value to customers, through those services. But it's taken some time. It's taken some time, to educate customers, to that value. It's taken some time to, educate our sales teams, our partners, in terms of how to articulate, those values, how to sell a service, rather than a product sale. Right. So you're starting to see some of that come through. Number two is customers are starting to see the value, right? And so you're getting, you know, customers electing for those services rather than the product sale. And then number three, certainly, and we've seen this, you know, in prior periods where there are tighter conditions. You know, there's a set of customers that, you know, because of cash constraints and things of that nature, really prefer the optionality that the consumption services offer. So when you kind of net that out, definitely seeing increased demand, you know, in terms of the mix, for the subscription consumption services relative to the product. I think that's really been the new part of the dialogue, certainly, that we've had last night. Has the company? I know you've been stressing the value of this consumption model for customers for quite some time. Has the conversation changed as we've moved through, let's say, this calendar year, given the macro? Because I think you disclosed last night, obviously, you had expectations for what that would look like within the overall revenue pie, and obviously, it's considerably outperformed. So, you know, as we move through the year, have those conversations changed? And where we're sitting today, just given the general macro, I mean, would you expect that sort of dynamic to be relatively consistent as we move forward? Not talking about guidance, but just sort of a buying pattern behavior going forward. Is that a reasonable proximity for the new normal, effectively, at least in the near term? Yeah. So if we look at, you know, how have those conversations progressed over the year? Certainly, you know, certainly getting stronger, again, partially because realization of the value we're delivering, but also we keep making the services better, right? If you look at, you know, how we've innovated in the Evergreen//One service over this year, we've added, you know, a number of additional SLAs and really guarantees in teeth to the service that customers, you know, are seeing, hey, this, this you know, being able to offload this risk and depend on Pure for this, gives me a ton of value. Paid Power and Rack, right? The- Right the idea that, hey, we're gonna go not just deliver you the storage, but we're gonna go take care of, you know, your power and space requirements as a part of that. Again, so we've been improving that service. That helps. Customer realization, you know, that definitely helps. And so, you know, then I think the first part of your question was, hey, so, you know, what did we see as we navigated throughout the year? You know, why are we having this conversation now, as far as, you know, just big inflection points? So if we, you know, take you back to the beginning of the year, right? When we kind of looked at the full year fiscal kind of outlook. A couple key assumptions that went into that, right? Number one was outlook on the macro, just overall. And then number two was, our expectations for a strong Evergreen//One performance throughout the year. If we look at how that's played out, throughout the year, the macro assumptions really not necessarily changed. Not much changed, right? Right. We kind of said, "Look, don't expect huge improvement. Don't expect huge worsening." That's kind of how it's played out, so really a non-factor. If we look at Evergreen//One performance, right? We had contemplated a strong performance from Evergreen//One in the original guide. As we got through the first half of the year in Q2, it became clear that we were already seeing strength in excess of what we had contemplated at the beginning of the year. And that's where we kind of said, "Look, you know, we're now expecting about a 1-2 point headwind against the full year guidance, you know, given the strength we saw into Q2." As we got through Q3 and a little bit of Q4, what we saw was strength even well in excess of that elevated level of expectations, and that's now where we're having the dialogue of saying, "Hey, you know, we're now thinking that the full year kind of revenue impact is gonna be more like a 3-point impact." a gain, great thing from the point of view of growth of Evergreen//One services, but certainly bringing the near-term impacts into the conversation. But does that mean, so obviously, I think customers are incredibly excited about consuming Evergreen and the consumption model. Is there a risk that that becomes a more prominent part of the selling motion, and that creates a bit of a revenue challenge? Just generically, like, obviously, that revenue will build and stack as you add customers to it. But have customers kind of learned the value, and they appreciate what you offer, and maybe CapEx becomes less of a priority, you know, in the intermediate term or the medium term? I think the question is: Hey, as customers see the value, do we see that potentially growing? Right. That'd be great, right? And we do see -- and I think the other part of the question I didn't answer- But at the expense of product, you know, traditional CapEx. And as it grows, and as that, you know, the rate of growth accelerates, yeah, you're, you are going to see that, that near term impact. But again, I take you back to, strategically, right? This is where we really want to focus on driving the maximum value through those services. I think the other part of your question, the previous question was: Hey, so what are we seeing now, outlook? You know, and, you know, staying away from specific outlook and, and specific comments on next year, we are seeing strong momentum, right? And that's kind of reflective in, you know, the comments we made last night and, and really our outlook for the rest of the year. And, and so that momentum continues. Got it. And then maybe just sticking with sort of demand trends and pricing. I know there was conversation about pricing being a little bit competitive, you know, a little bit more competitive than maybe I think people had anticipated. We've heard that from other companies, that the market's a bit more challenging. What do you? Is that macro that you're attributing it to? You know, a handful of vendors just being a little bit more aggressive. Like, how are you thinking about? I know you talked about being competitive to win business in certain parts of the market where you're not particularly dominant today or strong in today. Just the natural sort of dynamic in the marketplace or anything sort of crop up that maybe was a contributing factor to a more aggressive pricing backdrop? No, nothing specific to call out. I mean, storage has always been a competitive space. Right. You know, we've got a you know, large incumbent competitive set that you know, is trying to hang on to their installed base. You know, and so it's always been like that. Nothing specific to call out. Other than, to your point, you know, we are going to get aggressive, specifically in the areas of disk takeout, what we're pursuing in the E family. And so as you look at, kind of the overall pricing environment, gross product margins, certainly we're running a little bit hot there. Now, major benefit, all right, that's really the major benefit of that is coming from, you know, our Purity software, flash management benefits. You know, that gives us the flexibility, and we're going to go use that to get aggressive, specifically in the E family, where, you know, we're competing for that disk footprint alone in Flash. So when you think about being, you know, competitive, total cost of ownership, this takeout, that model, I think Kevan in the past has talked about potentially using, you just referenced, using gross margin as a tool effectively to be more competitive. So when you think about sort of running this business over the medium term and the long term, obviously product gross margins, I, I would imagine the message is, should trend back towards kind of the target model. Is that the right way to think about where gross margins on the product side, at least, should end up over the medium term? You, you know, 72, 73, 74 is probably not optimal from your perspective when you factor in sort of the growth outlook for the company. Yeah. So, to your point, 72, 73, 74, we're definitely running hot there right now. We are gonna be aggressive, and that's gonna, you know, bring that down a little bit in the E family. That said, right, if we look at the mix of business, we look at where E is, you know, it's gonna take some time, right? You know, it's gonna take some time for that to grow as a meaningful percentage. Right. You know, if we look at the rest of the business where, you know, I'm not winning on price, I'm not losing, not gonna lose a deal on price, you know, it's not gonna benefit me to, you know, to erode that, right? And that's again, that's really just coming through from the value I'm getting from the Purity of Flash management. Got it. So, you know, we do want to kind of bring that down. We want to do that, you know, and open up more market with the E family, but it's gonna take some time for that- Right to have a material effect on the blended. So, do you think I want to stick on the E family for a quick second, too. You know, given the launch of the E family, whether it's Blade or Array, maybe can you kind of qualitatively talk to the feedback right now? I know you, you referenced it was relatively strong since launch. Where are you from a total cost of ownership perspective and relative to what maybe the more mass-market hyperscalers are looking for? Can you maybe just kind of give us a sense for, you know, how you think that progresses from a price perspective relative to legacy disk systems? Like, are we at that inflection point where the conversations are much more robust than 6, 9 months ago, or is it still sort of a, an on-the-come story in that market? Yeah. So, let me answer that question from the point of view of enterprise systems and the enterprise market, and then we get into hyperscalers. Right. Right? So if we look at the enterprise market, where, you know, we're really competing against hard disk- Right OEM vendors, you know, we're at acquisition cost parity today. That's the nearline guys. Those are the nearline guys. Right. Exactly. So the enterprise guy, enterprise customers that are buying, you know, kind of looking at, hey, do I go with a nearline OEM product, or do I go with a Pure E family? On a acquisition cost basis, we're gonna go be at parity today. We're there, right? On a TCO basis, where you're now factoring the benefits of power, space, labor savings, the longevity, the fact that you're not replacing equipment all the time, very, very advantaged there. Depends on the specifics, but could be, you know- Right 20%, 30%, 50% advantage. And so that's the enterprise guys. If you look at where we are with the hyperscalers you know, the hyperscalers obviously have a much more optimized cost structure. They've, you know, built those environments very specifically, a little bit further out. But that's where our roadmap, specifically driven by, you know, flash density and technology, as we go from the 75 TB modules, which we just shipped, to the 150s next year. That's really where you're going to start to see that- Got it. that crossover point. Got it. And maybe just one final question on the quarter. Obviously, you referenced, you know, a fairly large $41 million contract that, you know, will get shipped and recognized in fiscal 2025. Can you kind of just walk through qualitatively, what, you know, obviously, the roadmap to win that transaction, and ultimately, why the customer prefers more of a, you know, measured- Scheduled shipment. Yeah, measured scheduled shipment sort of dynamic as opposed to, you know, book and ship effectively? Yeah, absolutely. You know, to your point, the majority, the vast majority of our product sales really are book and ship in a matter of days and weeks. You know, with this particular customer, as you'd imagine, a deal of this magnitude, we've been working for some time, definitely had contemplated and forecast, really looking at back half, the second half of this year. You know, really what happened is as we worked that deal, got to the kind of closing stages of that, working configurations and getting to that level of detail, you know, became clear that this was part of a staged 5G rollout- Right. -from this telco customer. I mean, lots of other logistics involved. Hey, you know, I've got buildings coming into place at certain times. And so, you know, not uncommon for the telco industry, but again, just deal this magnitude- It's different than enterprise. -less common for us. And so that's really why we called it out. So nothing- Was that a new Pure customer? Was that an incumbent relationship, or was that a, you know, basically a competitive win from an existing vendor, or this is a new use case for that particular customer, and you know, it's obviously 5G related? Just how, how did that come to be? It's an existing customer, so familiar with the Pure technology. I would say every win is competitive, right? But definitely existing customer. Got it. All right. So obviously, you're the CTO. Maybe I want to spend a little bit on the technology roadmap. You know, I think, you know, at your analyst meeting/industry event over the summer, you talked about the roadmap in terms of, you know, why your scale, your roadmap, more of the growth dynamics in terms of your ability to grow faster or add capacity faster at a more cost-effective way relative to some of your competitive peers in the industry, should help you win out over the next couple of years. Can you maybe walk us through sort of the competitive advantages as you see today with sort of your, you know, use of DirectFlash, you know, limited use of DRAM, obviously, how the operating system Purity kind of plays into that, and what the roadmap looks like into next year and beyond? Not specifics about numbers, but, you know, and plus the use of QLC and how that kind of plays into your strength and your competitive advantage going forward. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think this comes down to, you know, really, IP, software IP that we built going back to the beginning of the company. We took a very different approach than everybody else in the market when looking at Flash. We saw Flash for, you know, for what it is, which is a very different media than disk, requires a different approach to go use it. Requires a different software approach. Every other vendor on the market kind of said: Look, you know, I've got software that's written for disk. You know, the hardware manufacturers, the SSD manufacturers, they're going to go make Flash look like disk. I can just go slot that in. That's kind of the easiest path forward. And, you know, that progressed for a while, right? You know, in the early days, I would say we had advantages through our approach, in terms of efficiency, performance, you know, reliability, so on, so forth. Now, what's happened is that over time, those advantages, the magnitude of those advantages, has just increased, increased, increased, increased. And so then the question is, okay, well, why is that? Right? Normally, you would expect in technology, a differentiation gap to compress, not increase. What's happened is that, as the memory manufacturers, as raw NAND, right, has become more driven by the consumer market, it's pushed the road maps down a path of denser and denser chips that are harder and harder to work with, right? We've built the software from day one to go work with that Flash natively. That allows us to make much more use out of the same chip than anybody else can get out of the SSDs. Much less complex, the read, write, reading. Well, and we can get more use out of it, right? Right. We can put more data on the same chip than an SSD can. And so what's happened is, over time, as the chips have become more complex, the SSDs are having to do more and more work internally just to keep up. And frankly, they're at a breaking point. They're just bursting at the seams in terms of complexity, the amount of work that's required, and to your point, the resources that are required to do that, the DRAM- Right. the processing power, so on, so forth. You know, a good, you know, a good data point or point of validation for this is, you know, if you look at, you know, on the market, you look at 15.36 TB SSDs. You go to Amazon, Newegg, whatever, go buy one of the SSDs. If you tear it open and you look at the chips in there, you may find the same chips that are on our 18.3 TB DFM. So you're going to find the same number of chips. Well, then how is it that, you know, the SSD is offering 15.36 TB- Right. And we're offering 18.3? It's because of that software advantage. We're able to squeeze out a 20% more storage- Right. out of the same number of chips. That gap, that advantage, is just increasing with every generation of NAND. Does that resonate with your customers right now? So obviously, you know, you've taken a considerable amount of share since the introduction of the strategy, and I know Giancarlo's talked about I think he said publicly, like, we want to double share again, effectively. Go from, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Paul, like 7% share to like 14% share or some order of magnitude. What do you see as the impediment to achieving that, given sort of the technological roadmap that you see over the next couple of years? Is it, you know, maybe NAND prices increase, and that maybe makes, you know, that gap a little bit less relevant effectively, where customers are like, "Wait a second, you know, maybe we're not going to take out disk, and we'll, we'll continue to go with a lower-cost solution." Just what, what are sort of the hiccups or the hurdles that you're worried about of achieving that? You know, I would say the main hurdle or the main challenge is something we talked about earlier in the conversation, which is, you know, storage has always been a competitive space, right? Right. You know, taking share means winning it from a competitor, as competitors are, you know, gonna do everything they can to go and protect that. Now, that said, right, you know, we don't believe they can match up to us in terms of product, innovation, in terms of value, you know, and so. But that's going to be your main hurdle. I would say if we were having this conversation, you know, two years ago, I would say, you know, the other hurdle is, you know, we didn't, at that time, have as complete a portfolio or set of offerings, right? We could go into an enterprise customer and say, "Hey, you know, for this database workload, this AI workload, or this thing, you know, we can be the best thing for their workload. Ask, right. We might win that workload, but without being able to go in and say, "Hey, look, we can sweep the floor. We can satisfy all your needs," it's a little bit of a barrier to becoming a strategic vendor, right? We're now at the point where we've got that platform position, and we believe that's going to open up a greater wallet share in these larger enterprises. So what are you seeing are sort of the primary use cases for the success of the E-series right now? Like, when you go into a customer, what are you solving for them? Obviously, mass capacity, lower cost, but, you know, where are you seeing sort of that traction? Is it just strictly disk replacement, or maybe a customer might have been a little bit more amenable to a slightly more robust solution or offering, and, you know, the E makes more sense at this point? Just kind of maybe walk us through that. Yeah. So maybe two parts to that question: What are we solving for them and the major use cases. I think what we're solving for them is exactly what you mentioned, right? Much smaller footprint, much easier to manage, much lower, power consumption, all the benefits of flash at the cost of disk, right? Right. If you think about it, there's no reason why anybody out there says, "I would prefer disk over flash," even if, you know, it was- Right it was more, you know. The only reason that disk exists- Cost is, has historically been cost. And so that's really what we're solving for them, and the headache of managing the failures and so on and so forth. And so that's really been the feedback. Now, I think the first part of the question is, hey, major use cases, where are we seeing the traction? Where are we seeing it deployed? You know, I would say that, you know, a number of use cases, really, broad-based, right? You know, certainly bulk data, kind of content repositories, you know, medical imaging, you know, a whole, a whole host of things. Data protection, archiving. And it's not surprising, right? If you think about it, you know, the disk environments that we're going to replace, these have historically been, you know, the large parts of the estate that have just been shoved in the corner, you know, and kind of less cared for, most in need of modernization. Now, when you look at it through the lens of, you know, technologies like analytics and AI, and, hey, how do I go get value from that data that used to be a cost center, but now, you know, I can actually derive value from it? Extract the value, right? Well, there's no way I'm going to be able to do that if it's stuck on slow-spinning rust. Well, now I've got a viable outlet to go and modernize that solution, get the benefits of flash, save a bunch of power, space, and get the performance. That's really the set of conversations we're having. Got it. Maybe if we can spin up, no pun intended, to more higher use cases or more robust use cases. So, you know, obviously, every company this week has been talking about, in some way, shape, or form, their AI strategy. Obviously, it's a little bit different for you, right? In the sense that you've got a long-standing relationship with a hyperscaler for a different capacity, right? For, for different capacities than I think what people in the storage industry have done historically. Like, I don't think Dell and NetApp have a position that you have had. Maybe can you kind of talk to where you see the opportunity set next? Like, you talked about some small AI wins last night on the call, or not small, but, you know, a number of AI wins on the call. Where are you seeing the most traction in AI? 'Cause it sounded like to me, it was not more, it wasn't more like ChatGPT, OpenAI kind of dynamics to start. It's more machine learning or autonomous vehicle learning, et cetera. So maybe kind of walk through what you're seeing today and how do you think the model or the industry evolves for you? Yeah, absolutely. And so when we think about the AI opportunity, you know, broad strokes, right? I think about it in terms of the training opportunities, the inference and deployments of the AI technology, and then just the broader data flows, and how does the data come in and out of the system? Right. How does it, you know? And all of the kind of downstream effects of that. And so in the training environments, you know, I'd say that, you know, I'd say that we, we do see more coming from maybe the more traditional AI use cases. So, you know, self-driving cars, I gave an example of, you know, radiology, you know, things of that nature. You know, I think a lot of the large language model training is happening, you know, in the public clouds. But we do see, you know, training infrastructure that's really been, you know, historically where we've played in the AI market. We're now seeing, you know, wins in the other two spaces of AI opportunities as well, as well, though, right? In the inference environments, where, you know, you've got real-time data that's coming in, operational data that needs to be connected to these inferencing systems. Being able to serve those, whether it's a FlashArray, being able to stand up the applications that are kind of tying this all together, we're seeing that driving a number of Portworx wins, because it's just so highly aligned to the cloud-native ecosystem. And then as well, in the broader data environments, right? So we had a win, for example, with a company that's, you know, using E, leveraging a fair amount of E to go and modernize their historical data so that they can use that to bring into their training of ongoing models, and I think this customer's in the, kind of the security space, right? Okay. You're seeing wins across all three of those categories. Look, I mean, I think it's overall we're well positioned, you know, for the AI trends. But I'd also remind you that, you know, it's an important use case, but overall, it's not a dominant segment for us. Got it. Let me just make sure we don't have anything from the audience. Kind of touched on it earlier, but I still think maybe we'll just go back to it. I know we have a couple of minutes left, and there's more that I want to ask, but, actually, a couple of questions came in on this. Let's go back to subscription and product for a second. You know, there's been some debate that, you know, even if we make the adjustments for subscription being much stronger and that $41 million contract getting pushed out into 2025, it still suggests that maybe there was a little bit more macro softness or demand softness than maybe it, like, it sounded then on the call. Like, is there anything else kind of under the surface that maybe impacted the quarter that we didn't touch on? Nothing I'd call out. Because, again, you know, if we go back to, you know, kind of entering the year, full year, kind of outlook, even contemplating Evergreen//One, performance at that point, we kind of said, "Look, mid to high single digits, call it 7, 7.5 points. Right. You know, against that, right, we've said, "Look, Evergreen//One, just tremendous. Right. Okay. Three points there. You've got 1.5 points, you know, impact of the telco deal. And you kind of stack that up, 3 points from the Evergreen//One, 1.5 points, and then the 2.5 resultants. You're kind of into that 7-point range. Got it. Right in the fairway of what we saw. Got it. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about Meta. Any thoughts, updates, qualitatively, kind of how you're thinking about the relationship and kind of, you know, proof points, touch points with them? You know, haven't heard a lot in the numbers as of late. Just would love to get an update on what you're seeing and hearing from Meta. Yeah, relationship's great. You know, we continue to work very closely with them, and they're getting great value out of the solutions that we've deployed there. And to be clear, you know, we haven't commented and given an update on the specific deployment, which they've called out in the RSC environment. Exactly. We do have sales to other parts of Meta and not just the, you know, kind of the- Not just the RSC. Not just the corporate piece. But you know, just like we don't comment on sales to other specific customers, you know, we're not kind of providing commentary on sales to other parts of Meta. But the relationship is great, and we're very, very close to them. Got it. Maybe just one final question for me on AI. So when we talk to the hyperscalers, a little bit tough to get information out of them, as you can imagine. You know, they have stressed to us repeatedly, and this is, you know, the four U.S. hyperscalers, maybe we could throw in a little bit like tier two cloud guys as well, that, you know, performance, but cost keeps coming up over and over again. And I think you showed that slide at the Investor Day, right? Mm-hmm. You know, $0.05 per GB of storage. You know, are they amenable to the total cost of ownership conversation today? Meaning, you know, to get to $0.05 or some metric that's even close to $0.05, seems like a bit of a, a little bit of a challenge. Now, I would say this to Giancarlo, I said this to him over the summer, it just seems like a bit of a stretch in the near term. But does the AI, the growth in AI, maybe change that conversation, given how important the AI investments are to them? And so this is not just general purpose workload applications. This is much more robust, requires a better solution than what they have there, and so maybe that $0.05 per GB isn't the right metric. Maybe, you know, the gap is more narrow today than it was nine months ago. I mean, I know that's more of a theoretical question- Mm-hmm. But, you know, it seems like that would encourage them to be much more amenable to working with someone in your capacity in a much deeper, you know, relationship. Yeah. So what I'd say is, in the hyperscalers, just like in any firm, you're gonna have. It's not just one type of storage, right? They're gonna have multiple different types. And certainly, the AI effect is gonna increase performance pressure on some amount of that storage. And to your point, that's gonna lessen the focus on getting to that exact TCO. You know, it becomes a price performance conversation as opposed to an absolute price conversation. You have that effect. You know, but we're really focused on the broader picture, right? If you look at just the total amount of capacity deployed, you know, their total spend on storage, if you will, the vast majority of that is still gonna sit in bulk storage. Right sitting on disk. That's where that kind of 5-cent mark- Right which we call that, was, and really focused on getting to that mark. Okay. And that's where we believe our roadmap, right, what we have clearly in our sights really gets us there. And if you look at the evolving and really very productive conversations we're having with the hyperscalers, it's really centered around the TCO benefits we can deliver against that bulk storage. Said more simply, if you can hit that mark against the bulk storage, you know, you can go deliver more and more performance up the stack. Got it. I think we're out of time. Rob, I wanna thank you for joining us. Paul, thank you for joining us. I'm sure you have a full day of meetings, so thank you again, and hope to see you again next year. And thanks, everyone, for sticking around on the last day, and have a great, safe trip back, and we'll talk soon. All right. Thanks, everyone. Great. Thanks, Rob.