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I'm Sarah Richardson, a principal here at this week Health where our mission is healthcare transformation powered by community. Welcome to this executive interview, candid conversations about leading with purpose.

Let's connect.

  Chris, welcome to hys. We're kicking off like officially ish day one of like everyone waiting in line to cram into this space and then to go hunt down their boots.

This is exciting. I think this might be the official kickoff.

It is.

And, really excited for this week.

Yeah, we came in, uh, a couple days early, did a few partner events and just had some fun.

But today, literally like as we all were funneling in, I'm like, there's a lot of people here.

Yeah.

It gives me. A lot of faith in our industry because you hear about different markets or different opportunities. Waning and HIMSS to me has, is just continues to thrive. It's such a great space to be in.

I mean, if you just look around the exhibit hall today, you just see all the different vendors, a lot of the same ones that have been here for a while. A lot of new ones. You know, we're excited to be here as well. Every year we've come and I, I, I find it to be one of the best ways to kind of really meet and greet with our customers and our partners.

It is a great way to get connected and I always love just checking out Booth. There should be a competition for Best Booth. However, um, you and I have notes today because there's been some big news Yes. Uh, in the press. I mean, the industry literally woke up last week and Pure Storage is now ever pure.

We are now ever pure.

So what's the significance of the name change and what does that mean for the future, future direction of the company?

Well, it's really exciting actually. Many of our customers and partners have really known us as a storage, uh, storage company. Mm-hmm. What the brand allows us to do now is to evolve from being a hardware vendor to be a comprehensive data platform.

And so EverPure is essentially leveraging what we've done really well, keeping the pure pedigree, but also incorporating evergreen, which is our kind of always on, always,, always there for our customers model. And so. As we kind of shift from moving from simply a storage, soaring data to actually providing more of a intelligent, secure, and uh, usable data layer, this really allows us to bring that together.

And we've also, uh, announced that we're acquiring a company One Touch acquisition, which is really exciting because it allows us to really realize our vision of the, um, enterprise data cloud. Mm-hmm. As well as give us the capability to not only, um. AC acquire the data, but also bake data discovery, semantic context and privacy natively into that data layer.

So it's really giving us the chance to move beyond what we've done really well, but also leverage that pedigree, leverage that foundation, and really bring, uh, another, uh, expanded offering to our customers.

So the name itself is, means a lot as a customer, truly because every conversation we're having about the ability to create the.

Data and the governance and the engineering required to do AI successfully. I mean, everyone's saying don't talk about ai. It's the buzzword, but it is the thing and it's everywhere. And if you don't have great data, keep your information pure, you're not gonna be able to do it well. So what a perfect timing for, I'm sure it was planned, but it was a great timing on the name change.

I wanna ask you also about the healthcare strategy and focus. I mean, you're stepping into a role, uh, healthcare business, uh, at a very pivotal time. We just said AI acceleration, cyber workforce strain. Where do you see EverPure uniquely positioned to help health systems over the next three to five years?

And I will caveat that by saying nobody's really able to say what their three to five year like outlook is going to be. 'cause there's so many accelerating unknowns. But how are you helping them get there?

Well, I mean, having worked in healthcare my whole career and seeing how it's evolved quickly and rapidly and all at once.

AI is just kind of that accelerant, and so customers health systems that we work with really have to solve for what I think are three major challenges. One is they have to modernize for ai, that is a C-suite leadership mandate. Every hospital, every health system needs to figure out how they're gonna modernize their data platform.

For ai, they have to strengthen cybersecurity, more vulnerable than ever before. And it's important that the data and as the foundation, as well as the applications and capabilities are resilient to cyber attacks. And they have to do this all while controlling costs and delivering patient outcomes at the same time.

And so when I, when I think about, you know, where we are in the industry, letting you see infrastructure just fails at that. And that's where I think we come in When you're talking about healthcare, downtime is not an option. It, it's not just an inconvenience. It's actually. Critical care. And so we protect that.

We protect EHRs, we protect enterprise imaging. We even protect mission critical apps that many of our health systems and customers depend on. And when you think about, really what we are trying to do is we're trying to really reduce that complexity, that infrastructure complexity, and make it very simple so that the already stretched IT teams that exist can focus on what they need to do, which is transform and prepare and enable.

Our customers and their, their patients for that AI readiness

and it's huge. Yeah. I mean, honestly, and even this is one of the big conversations we had at our dinner last night was literally about getting your data to a place where it's usable. Yeah. And safe and partitioned appropriately for the different use cases that you're gonna bring forward.

That is not a one and done, it's an ongoing effort that the, even the democratization of the data and the governance that goes around, it's fascinating. And then you layer on those AI capabilities. And top of mind, obviously this year at HIMSS is all of the ambient documentation, imaging, predictive analytics.

What has to be true about the data foundation for these initiatives to go well?

Well, it's a great question. If you think about a healthcare innovation only moves as fast as the data foundation beneath it. And so when you think about all the amazing algorithms, all the companies that are coming out with clinical documentation, predictive analytics.

And, and really moving to the cloud, it all needs to be, um, it's, it's really gonna be only as good as the data that's feeding it. And it requires fast, clean, secure data at the, at a scale that can, uh, grow with the, the organization. So what we do and what we aim to do is really eliminate those fragmented silos that are, uh, existing across each of the health systems.

And unify both their on-prem and their cloud environments into one common enterprise data cloud so that our customers can build and help move from AI being a pilot to AI being in production at an enterprise grade.

You gotta leave, you're gonna help 'em control the cost of understanding that too. And that's why partners you are so important.

Yeah, it is hard to also do that three to five year prediction of how much is it going to cost us to run these models and these different aspects because beyond technology. Healthcare leaders are looking for partners who understand operational realities and that margin compression and that budgeting is a huge one of it.

How are you thinking differently about partnering with health systems so you can be their long-term solution for the things that are coming that we might not even know about right now?

Yeah. Well, I'm fairly new here at EverPure, but one thing I hear constantly is we're, we're a leader in selling storage and that's not what we just do.

We actually provide that foundational data platform. That powers both clinical and operational innovation. And so we, the way we think about it and the way we partner with our customers is that we align our infra those infrastructure decisions to those clinical practices, those important decisions. So how do you best deliver that patient impact?

It's through providing our the DICOM images faster. It's also through providing them models that align with their operational needs. Needs. For example, we're providing our customers now, um, imaging as a service. So this is essentially aligning their business model with our business model or our business model, with their business model, so that we're enabling them to focus that, that the type budget that they have into where it makes most sense for them and only pay for the storage they need for those images at their story.

And so when I think about it, you know, we deliver one consistent secure data platform. Uh, across a hybrid environment, which helps our customers take that it complexity and allow the providers to focus on what they can and what they mean and need to do most.

So all the incremental planning can be with you.

It's like, Hey, this should be on-prem, this should be in the cloud. We need to have access to this. Like all those modularly aspects of the strategic plan, you plug in where you need to and you can give them these foundational elements. Here's what I love about what you've shared with me today. When your foundation is right, your storage, your ability to, to retrieve or archive information and your next set of layers is also with one partner.

That is such a powerful conversation. 'cause you bring everything you're seeing in the industry to them and then they give you all of their ideas. And some of them may not be exactly as they should be and you're like, wait, we've actually seen this here and here's what we're recommending instead. It's such a great thought partnership.

It's,

thank you so much for being here. Congrats on the new role. Congrats on the new organization. And I have one last really important question for you. Yes. Tell us about your logo

better, your logo. I am learning, but this is essentially staying with us. This logo is, uh, the Pure Storage, which is now the ever pure logo.

And it, it, it does signify what we talked about before. It, it signifies the P for pure, but also the, the ever arching or ever looping, um. Evolution of where we want to go. I'm also learning, and so I'm, I'm really excited to kind of wear that logo as, as a badge of honor.

It's always fun joining a new organization.

Yeah. Here's what I tell people. It's been what, two months for you?

Two months.

Okay. This is an industry perspective for me, and I've been around a long time. Six months, and you'll be comfortable in your role in a year. You're like, I got this. This is mine. So four months from now, check in and you're gonna say, oh my gosh, you were right.

I finally feel like I have enough. Information to be armed and dangerous appropriately, but it does take that long, so, so glad you joined the organization. Yeah, you have a great background. You're gonna kill it here more than ever. Enjoy the ride. Thanks for being here. I

really appreciate that, sir.

Yeah, take care.

Thank you. Take care.

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