Pure Storage sees challenges, opportunities in public sector

Public sector organisations are currently putting their IT investments on hold – despite a push from Whitehall around digital government, and in particular using artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver better public services.

That’s according to Geoff Greenlaw, VP for EMEA and LATAM channel at data storage firm Pure Storage, who outlined the obstacles the company is facing in the public sector, as well as the opportunities it sees going forward.

One of the biggest challenges is that in countries such as the UK, France, and Germany, a lot of public sector budgets have been frozen, leading customers to “sweat their assets a lot longer than they typically would,” Greenlaw told Think Digital Partners.

“The geopolitical climate at the moment…things are being stopped because of a lack of decision making until governments are formed, particularly in France and Germany. For sure, that public sector spending tap has been turned off in these countries at the moment,” Greenlaw added.

Despite these headwinds, Greenlaw sees significant potential in the public sector, particularly around the UK government’s push for AI and digital transformation. However, he cautioned that the foundations for these initiatives are still lacking.

“We’re not seeing that [foundation]. Our partners are not seeing that either, in terms of investment. I don’t know where all this money is coming from, because it’s billions of pounds of spending on AI.”

“How can you build an AI platform if your data is in completely disparate silos across multiple vendors?” he added, pointing to Pure’s Enterprise Data Platform, which offers a unified data services platform to improve data management across different environments.

AI: Users ‘don’t know what they don’t know’

Pure Storage conducted research in 2024 that showed almost nine in 10 (88 percent) business leaders predict that their AI-generated data will soon outgrow their organisation’s current datacentres. Consequently, 78 percent are worried their infrastructure can’t keep up with AI.

Greenlaw added: “At a foundational level, AI means something different to everybody, and I don’t actually think [users] know what they want to leverage it for. They don’t know what they don’t know.”

Greenlaw emphasised the need for a more holistic approach to public sector digital transformation, involving a “conglomeration of multiple IT companies” to help government agencies build the necessary data management and AI capabilities.

“It can’t be just Pure to help them on that journey, or Dell or HPE. It’s a conglomeration of multiple IT companies who need to come together to help them on that journey.”