Everpure is urging partners to go beyond traditional storage sales and build higher-value AI, data governance and consulting practices.
Speaking ahead of the company’s Accelerate 2026 conference this week, Ricardo Moreno, VP of global partner sales, said AI is placing unprecedented demands on enterprise data.
“One thing is very clear: AI will require lots of data like never before,” Moreno said. “But what is also very critical in business is not just data. Latency matters for AI to work. Speed matters tremendously.”
Everpure unveiled two new offerings on Wednesday to help customers overcome data quality, governance and integration challenges that often prevent AI projects from moving into production. Data Intelligence gives users tools to discover, classify and govern data across disparate environments, while Data Stream provides a blueprint for preparing and moving enterprise data into AI workflows.
The rollouts follow the company’s recent rebrand from Pure Storage to Everpure and its February acquisition of data discovery software vendor 1touch, underscoring the company’s pivot from straight data storage to data usage.
Infrastructure plus
While storage infrastructure has often been viewed as a back-office IT concern. Moreno argues that AI is changing that dynamic.
“Before all of this, if you talked to most CXOs, they didn’t care about the infrastructure component of technology. They cared about business outcomes,” he said. “Now, because this is becoming so critical for the business, AI becomes a fundamental enabler for the outcome. They care more than ever before.”
The shift is opening new conversations for partners, particularly those capable of combining infrastructure expertise with data strategy, governance and AI services.
“Clients are coming to partners for infrastructure, because if the infrastructure is not there, AI is just wishful thinking. But now infrastructure alone is not enough,” said Moreno.
He maintained that customers increasingly need help finding, classifying, governing and understanding their data before AI initiatives can deliver meaningful results.
“This requires a high level of very complex services that our partners like so much,” he said.
Moreno said he wants partners to continue selling storage — but not to stop there.
“My primary message to partners is ‘sell the portfolio,’” he said. “We’ve been very successful selling storage. Keep selling storage — it’s the base for everything. But there’s much more now beyond storage.”
The company believes data discovery and classification tools create opportunities for partners to move up the value chain, helping customers develop strategies for AI adoption.
“The partners that are being more successful are the ones that understand the business strategy, understand what data strategy is needed, and help customers build that data strategy.”
He added that partners investing in dedicated AI practices are already reaping rewards.
“Building the practice is becoming a critical differentiator,” he said.
AI enablement
Everpure is arming its partners with training to drive self-sufficiency in the ecosystem.
“Partners are craving enablement on the AI space because it’s a very new space for many of them,” said Moreno.
The company plans to identify a group of early adopters around some of its newest technologies, giving selected partners an opportunity to build expertise before broader market adoption.
Moreno believes the biggest commercial opportunity lies in helping partners develop recurring revenue streams around infrastructure consumption models, AI services and data management consulting rather than relying solely on traditional product sales.
“We’re bringing a lot of tools and capabilities to make partners more self-sufficient than they have been with us,” he said.
AI has become a data conversation, which puts partners in a strong position to expand their role.
“It is time that we elevate our value exchange,” he said. “The fundamentals are still important, but now we have permission to do more.”
