Nasuni Snags Pure Storage Executive As First CRO

‘My joining hopefully scales Nasuni for growth. Nasuni has reached a scale where a CRO can help position the company for maximum impact. Having a CRO is also big for helping grow our alliances and partnerships. We have a healthy channel orientation. And part of our scaling will come through truly unlocking the potential of our partnerships,’ says new Nasuni CRO Pete Agresta.

Pete Agresta

Hybrid cloud storage technology provider Nasuni Wednesday unveiled the hiring of Pure Storage’s Pete Agresta as the firm’s first-ever chief revenue officer.

Agresta joined Nasuni Tuesday after nearly four years at storage vendor Pure Storage, where he served nearly four years as that company’s vice president of Americas enterprise sales. He told CRN that long-time “Puritan” Mike Sakalas has taken over his role at Pure Storage. He also spent time in sales at several other vendors, and started his career at Digital Network Associates, a solution provider which eventually evolved to be Aztec Technologies.

The role of chief revenue officer is a new one for Nasuni, and reports to Nasuni President Dave Grant, Agresta said.

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Bringing on a CRO is a move that will help accelerate the growth of Boston-based Nasuni, which Agresta said has seen a real acceleration in the maturity of its products for the last couple years.

“My joining hopefully scales Nasuni for growth,” he said. “Nasuni has reached a scale where a CRO can help position the company for maximum impact. Having a CRO is also big for helping grow our alliances and partnerships. We have a healthy channel orientation. And part of our scaling will come through truly unlocking the potential of our partnerships.”

Nasuni’s hiring of a CRO is worth notice, said Vince Trama, senior vice president of sales at Presidio, a New York-based global solution provider and longtime Nasuni channel partner.

“Most of the companies we deal with have a chief revenue officer and chief sales officer,” Trama told CRN. “It’s important to have someone at the level you can trust. Pete is someone I’ve known for 30 years, since we both just started our careers.”

Agresta’s former role at a solution provider is important, Trama said.

“Pete understands partner profitability,” he said. “That’s a big plus. Also, he’s a very actionable person. He follows through on anything he says. I saw that in him at Pure Storage. Pete’s well known, and has the right DNA for the role. He’s the right guy to take Nasuni to the next level from a channel perspective.”

While Agresta has only just joined Nasuni and has not yet had an opportunity to come up with detailed plans for further growth, he said he definitely focus on accelerating Nasuni’s go-to-market motions via the channel.

“As the channel changes, it’s important to expand our channel relationships,” he said. “And in a rapidly changing market, the value of partners is multiplied.”

While at Pure Storage, Agresta was part of the transition to build a subscription business via that company’s Evergreen//One storage as a service model based on Pure Storage’s all-flash hardware. It is a transition that for many companies can be tremendously difficult, he said.

“Pure, to be fair, is in the middle of that transition with Evergreen//One,” he said. There was some friction as we and our partners changed the business model, but it worked. So I am excited about the native subscription model at Nasuni. Nasuni has a low customer churn with amazing net revenue retention.”