You’re a $2.8 billion storage supplier, and your business revolves around flash arrays. So, how do you handle research and development, test new products, and tackle customer workload issues, especially when those problems emerge over years because of software, network, and application changes?
You’re juggling a global operation with R&D teams spread across different time zones, all focusing on monthly updates and fine-tuning storage controller software. The base product doesn’t change much, which means effective collaboration and information sharing between teams around the world is crucial. But you also have to consider regional customer-specific array configurations.
At Pure Storage, the strategy is straightforward: split responsibilities between hardware and software while sharing R&D and testing capabilities across three main sites. Santa Clara, California, is your global headquarters, handling both hardware and software development. In Bangalore, India, the focus is on software. Then there’s Prague, Czechia, which recently opened up to the IT press to showcase its work.
Each of these sites offers overlapping capabilities, which might seem inefficient at first glance. However, Paul Melmon, engineering vice president and Prague site leader, explains that apart from hardware development, each site operates autonomously. “We aim to minimize cross-time zone meetings and utilize tools like Git repositories for information sharing.”
Rob Lee, your chief technology officer, adds that instead of fragmenting projects into small pieces across multiple locations, Pure assigns significant parts of each product to specific sites, allowing local product managers to oversee development.
In Prague, a dedicated team works on software research, development, and testing, running thousands of custom tests on numerous racks of software. Tom Healy, engineering manager, distinguishes between non-persistent and persistent testing. Non-persistent tests focus on immediate customer configurations or the implications of software updates. Persistent tests are long-term and can take years, monitoring the lifecycle of customer systems and tracking how changes affect software, hardware, and system stability.
Prague’s facility counts hundreds of engineers focused on developing storage array software for ongoing updates. Celebrating its five-year milestone recently, it employs 600 people, half of whom are Czech and half from other countries, representing up to 50 different nationalities.
Pure chose Prague not only for its proximity to customers but also for its talent pool. Melmon believes the city’s tech scene rivals that of Silicon Valley, thanks to its transport links, universities, and relatively low cost of living. The area has a vibrant startup culture, reminiscent of San Francisco’s “South of Market” district, with evening meetups and a lively tech community.
And when it comes to investment, Pure spends 19.7% of its revenue on R&D. Prague stands out as the largest Pure Storage R&D center outside the U.S., contributing about a third of the FlashArray product development. The FlashBlade//S was designed and tested there, along with key components of the Pure Fusion workload management platform and Pure1 AIOps.
All of this makes Prague a cornerstone of Pure Storage’s three-site R&D and testing strategy, dovetailing with a nearby global assembly center.