Leading sustainability can be understood as quite similar to being in product development, according to Niki Armstrong, chief administrative and legal officer at data storage and management hardware supplier Pure Storage.
At Pure, sustainability, especially in the datacentre, has been a focus from the start. The company’s founder built its first products with sustainability in mind, alongside the more traditional notion of changing an industry.
After all, legacy storage is bulky, costly, and takes up a lot of space, power and cooling, which is an expensive business when you think about hard disks or spinning disks.
“And so, we wanted a simple product, something easy to install, but that would not also create a lot of e-waste or forklift upgrades, and migration times and things that cost money and resources for companies,” says Armstrong.
Then it becomes a matter of informing practice through the concepts of simplicity, creativity and innovation.
Armstrong runs Pure’s sustainability initiatives, where “constant, intentional” improvement is key.
“I have the privilege of leading our legal, our HR teams, and our sustainability organisation, as well as our social impact function – we have our corporate philanthropy under me as well,” Armstrong says.
“The bottom line is, I get all the fun groups. My remit covers everything from governance and compliance to culture and talent, social and sustainability impacts.”
She adds that the excitement of the role is inherent in the interconnectivity, as it were, rather than considered as separate silos – a comment that will chime with others in the space.
“Sustainability has always sat under legal and work. It’s been called ESG [environmental, social and governance], sustainability, impact, you name it. But it’s all to do with the same challenges. And I’m super passionate about every single one of those functions.”
Linking sustainability, intentionality and innovation
The focus on sustainability gives Armstrong the chance to really help, to be a good citizen who can build and enhance a culture where accountability, intentionality and innovation can co-exist.
As with one or two other sustainability officers in this series, Armstrong brings her legal and operational lens to the role to achieve more for Pure with fewer resources.
While it doesn’t sound superficially like there is an especially green focus in that title or those departments, HR and legal are important partners in all respects, not least because the task at hand means you need to bring everyone with you over time.
“I like to compare our products to wine – they are better with age. We are designing for enduring value, extending lifespans. Not obsolescence”
Niki Armstrong, Pure Storage
“As with legal, leadership and in HR, we are service organisations, and so we are often working across functions to influence the result,” Armstrong confirms. “That comes naturally.”
However, her vision is for sustainability principles, thinking and practice to become so embedded that they become “a sort of muscle memory” that you can infuse into business strategy on a regular basis. That’s opposed to the idea of being able to tick off the main points and then write about it in annual reporting, of course.
An employment lawyer by background, Armstrong often found herself arguing for various parties’ viewpoints in courtrooms. And she felt strongly that it would be “amazing” to create an environment at a workplace that could actually reduce the chance of ending up in court in the first place.
Originally, she had merely wondered how to achieve such a thing. Over time, however, her conversations and connections with other industry stakeholders clarified how HR teams and management could work together to create environments “filled with respect, dignity and engagement”. Sustainability ultimately dovetailed productively with that.
After several legal firm roles and a senior corporate counsel position at Nutanix, where she remained for four years, Armstrong joined Pure Storage in 2017.
“As I grew at Pure, I then took on the chief legal officer role [in 2022] and came in to lead the global employment team,” she says. “At the time, the foundation of ESG reporting was just a twinkle in people’s eyes.”
Today, several people are on the sustainability team. Other stakeholders include the chief financial officer (CFO) organisation, supply chain operation, the operations organisation, and the chief technical officer (CTO) office.
“All of that kind of comes together. And for me personally, I’m passionate about creating an environment not just that’s stellar for people, but also one that you know is going to be around for my kids and my kids’ kids,” adds Armstrong.
“I love working for a company that actually cares about that and is creating a product that’s better for their community and our world.”
Indeed, Armstrong says it has been a “really fantastic journey”, teaching her a lot in just eight years at Pure, particularly around the sustainability function, as well as in governance and compliance. She jokes that she has gradually become familiar with “all sorts of new acronyms”.
Expanding and broadening the responsibility remit
Meanwhile, Armstrong continues to expand and broaden the sustainability remit, including through the Pure Storage corporate philanthropy arm, lobbying for change with the community and with the Pure Good Foundation.
“We focus on things near and dear to our hearts,” says Armstrong. “We have a global workforce. Our employees love to get involved and help their local communities.”
Sustainability is not just around a product or a single job function, but about how the whole business operates and delivers outcomes, she adds. Climate change adaptation is a top-tier priority at Pure, alongside emissions reduction and data security topics.
I can proudly say that the first array we ever sold, in December 2011, is still in service, and it is bigger and more efficient than ever because that is our Evergreen promise
Niki Armstrong, Pure Storage
Her HR team focuses on culture, accountability and leadership capabilities, while her sustainability team works on turning all of those principles into measurable action across the Pure business. And then Pure’s product team thinks about how to continue to innovate and continuously improve its products or make them more efficient to better serve customers.
Quarterly reviews of progress and any trade-offs follow to ensure alignment with the same discipline applied to its own business performance, measurable goals, cross-functional accountability, and board visibility and engagement. Of course, there’s risk committee oversight too, and a “highly engaged” board.
Two board members have completed additional training and certification in ESG. That means spreading the load and sharing the ESG responsibility, as well as ensuring all the moving parts are connected.
“Our ESG governance is not something that’s just simply owned by me,” says Armstrong. “It’s like a four-headed dragon: HR teams, legal teams, the chief technical officer and his team, as well as the global supply chain officer and his team, all coming together with the chief financial officer involved as well.”
And targets – aligned where relevant with UN sustainable development goals – are tight. They mean managing emissions reductions for full-year 2025 revenues of $3.17bn (£2.39bn) across 13,000 customers, 6,000 employees and more than 30 countries.
Armstrong can confirm delivery on its 2025 science-based initiative (SBTi) commitments. Pure’s targets for Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions cuts were validated in January 2025, with Scope 1 and 2 ambitions remaining in line with a 1.5ºC temperature rise. Pure is aiming for 42% less Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, versus full-year 2023, and net-zero emissions for Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2040.
Beyond that, for Scope 3 reductions, the aim is to halve emissions from the use of sold products by full-year 2030. Of Pure’s suppliers, 45% are expected to have their own science-based targets too, by 2029, she notes.
Key to Pure’s sustainability advantage is, alongside flash and services, its cloud focus; it just makes sense to be software-defined. Also, not only have customers never had to migrate their hardware, some have never had any downtime despite “having been through upgrades and some changes”, she says.
“I can proudly say that the first array we ever sold, in December 2011, is still in service, and it is bigger and more efficient than ever because that is our Evergreen promise,” she says. For context, Evergreen//One is Pure’s storage-as-a-service offering.
“I like to compare our products to wine – they are better with age. We are designing for enduring value, extending lifespans. Not obsolescence.”
One particular customer has slashed power needs by 96% by leveraging Pure’s approach, “which is incredible”. Others have ended up with an IT footprint a quarter of the size and 97% faster backup. So, it’s not just about less waste and more sustainability – customers can achieve “more lift”. Which is all rather gratifying, she enthuses.
For the future, Pure plans to continue to steer strategy toward greater lifecycle accountability, including across the entire supply chain and its product lines. That means further developing materiality reporting and documenting of impacts, and working on helping customers visualise their own energy savings using the sustainability dashboard in Pure’s proprietary software.
“Customers will be able to look at that and see their cost savings and energy savings immediately,” says Armstrong.
An overall principle is to decouple data growth from energy and water growth. Some customers are already doing well here, she says, citing one that has reportedly reduced water consumption for cooling by 85%. But more eco-friendly designs of all products will continue to be key.
Additionally, Pure has rolled out an EU policy covering energy, waste and water management, as well as an environmental sustainability product policy. About 70% of its suppliers, by spend, are already covered by that, and Armstrong says the plan is to move more of Pure’s suppliers underneath that.
“We are also focused on competing with ourselves – we look at things like Sustainalytics and EcoVadis, asking how do we get better against ourselves? What did we do last year that sets the new baseline? Then we go into the next year with the goal of getting better than that,” she says.
Read more from the IT Sustainability Interviews series
