Rather than deploying systems management software on premise, it’s increasingly starting to look like just about every form of IT management software is going to be pushed into the cloud.

The latest example of this trend comes from Pure Storage, which this week unfurled a Pure1 management platform alongside new additions to its family of Flash storage arrays.

Remotely managing storage

Vaughn Stewart, chief evangelist for Pure Storage, said one of the obvious benefits of putting storage management into the cloud is that it makes it a lot easier for solution providers to deliver a managed storage service. Rather than asking customers to dedicate server infrastructure to run management software, the entire storage environment can now be remotely management.

To make that idea more appealing, Pure Storage also extended its pricing model in a way that enables organizations to update storage controllers without having to ever migrate data. Under a new Evergreen Storage model, Stewart said customers can slipstream upgrades to storage controllers without having to migrate data out of their existing systems during the actual upgrade process; thereby eliminating the need for forklift upgrades in the data center.

Flat pricing

Stewart says Evergreen Storage is essentially an extension of the company’s Forever Flash flat pricing model, which already includes software updates as well as periodic hardware upgrades over time. Pure Storage this week also announced Upgrade Flex Bundles, through which customers can receive trade-in credits for controllers they choose to upgrade over an extended period of time.

Finally, to give IT customers something to upgrade to Pure Storage announced a new generation of storage FlashArray//m series arrays based on Intel Haswell class processors. Based on 3u racks, Pure Storage claims the top end of the FlashArray//m provides over 400 TB of usable Flash storage at 300,000 32K IOPS. General availability of these arrays is scheduled for the third quarter.

Central management

As the amount of data residing in Flash arrays not only continues to increase, but also how widely distributed it is Pure Storage clearly sees being able to centrally manage all that data via the cloud as a strategic advantage.

In general, storage management has always proven to be something of an elusive opportunity for MSPs. But as more IT management moves into the cloud the ability to remotely manage storage alongside servers and networks becomes more accessible to a broader range of MSPs. Obviously, MSPs can build their own management consoles for just about anything. But when vendors start to build out IT management capabilities in the cloud there’s really no reason why MSPs shouldn’t find a way to tap into a new potential source of recurring revenue.