Pure Storage announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Portworx for approximately $370 million in cash. This deal represents Pure's largest acquisition to date and the company's deeper expansion into the fast-growing market for multi-cloud data services to support Kubernetes and containers.

"As forward-thinking enterprises adopt cloud native strategies to advance their business, we are thrilled to have the Portworx team and their groundbreaking technology joining us at Pure to expand our success in delivering multi-cloud data services for Kubernetes," said Charles Giancarlo, Chairman and CEO, Pure Storage. "This acquisition marks a significant milestone in expanding our Modern Data Experience to cover traditional and cloud native applications alike."

Portworx is the Kubernetes Data Services Platform most used by Global 2000 companies to provide persistent storage, high availability, data protection, data security, and cloud mobility for containers deployed in hybrid cloud architectures. By combining Portworx container data services with Pure's industry-leading data platforms and Pure Service Orchestrator software, Pure will provide a comprehensive suite of data services that can be deployed in-cloud, on bare metal, or on enterprise arrays, all natively orchestrated in Kubernetes. With Portworx, Pure delivers the industry's most complete platform for every stage of the cloud native journey. 

Digital leaders are increasingly turning to the cloud native stack to process data into value and insight. Today, 95% of new applications are developed in containers according to 451 Research. By 2025, Gartner predicts that 85% of global businesses will be running containers in production, up from 35% in 2019. Yet, as cloud native scales, traditional and cloud-based storage can struggle to keep-up with the fluid nature of microservice applications deployed in containers, making data resiliency, mobility, security, backup, and recovery a challenge, especially in multi-cloud deployments. Cloud native applications deserve a storage services platform purpose-built to address these challenges. Together, Portworx and Pure deliver this, today.

"I'm tremendously proud of what we've built at Portworx: an unparalleled data services platform for customers running mission-critical applications in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The traction and growth we see in our business daily shows that containers and Kubernetes are fundamental to the next-generation application architecture and thus competitiveness," said Murli Thirumale, CEO, Portworx. "We are excited for the accelerated growth and customer impact we will be able to achieve as a part of Pure."

"The acquisition of Portworx by Pure Storage, illustrates the rapidly growing importance and interest in cloud native strategies for enterprises globally," said Alex Chircop, Founder and CEO, StorageOS. "As a software-defined cloud native storage platform, we have seen rapid growth over the last 12 months of enterprises adopting cloud native strategies to deliver multi-cloud data services for Kubernetes. It’s clear that containers and Kubernetes play a central role in next generation application architecture, and we are excited to see how this market continues to grow and develop, now that Pure Storage has bought into this space." 

"In 2019 we evaluated Kubernetes storage platforms for one of our services and after thorough research we decided on Portworx," said Sven Sonnendorfer, Community Manager, Audi Business Innovation, a 100% subsidiary of Audi AG who provide cloud services to VW Group members. "The improved performance compared to the standard Kubernetes storage provider, the included features, reliable operations and upgrades and the great support demonstrate that this was the right decision. Portworx saves us time and money by providing more reliable tooling to our customers."