Announcing the 2025 Accelerator Award Winners

One of the most rewarding parts of what we do is seeing how organizations around the world truly harness the power of their data to create real, meaningful impact. We get a front-row seat as these companies challenge the status quo and pass those improvements on to the rest of the world. The result: extraordinary outcomes that stretch far beyond the data center. 

The unforgettable vacation you took with your family. The trust we place in secure e-commerce experiences. Less e-waste cluttering our landfills. Behind each of these outcomes is an organization transforming how they manage their data, and our 2025 Accelerator Awards honor them and their exceptional vision, leadership, and technical excellence. Let’s meet the winners, announced today at Pure//Accelerate^® 2025:

Visionary Award: Fiserv

New this year, the Visionary Award celebrates organizations that exemplify exceptional foresight, innovation, and leadership in adopting transformative technologies. We’re thrilled to honor Fiserv with this award for their unwavering commitment to digital transformation and their significant contributions in reshaping the future of financial services technology. 

Their pioneering approach—embracing cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and cyber resiliency—has accelerated operational efficiencies and significantly enhanced customer experiences. Fiserv’s proactive investment in next-generation data management solutions makes them true visionaries—able to anticipate market shifts and deliver agile, secure, and scalable platforms to customers. Congrats, Fiserv!

Breakthrough Awards

Our flagship Breakthrough Awards recognize customers who have embraced the power of the Pure Storage platform to drive transformative outcomes, accelerating innovation, efficiency, and growth within their organizations.

North America: Royal Caribbean

How does a storied cruise line set new benchmarks for guest experiences in a competitive industry? By transforming their cruise ships into powerful, maritime data centers. 

Facing challenges with legacy storage systems needed for critical shipboard operations, Royal Caribbean embarked on an ambitious digital transformation with Pure Storage and Portworx® to revolutionize both their onboard and shoreside capabilities. 

The results were transformative. Critical guest-facing systems, from point-of-sale terminals to casino operations and passenger services, now operate with unprecedented reliability and efficiency. Royal Caribbean’s bold technology strategy fundamentally transforms how cruise vacations are delivered in the digital age. They’ve set new standards for customer experience excellence in the cruise industry, earning them well-deserved recognition with this year’s Breakthrough Award.

EMEA: Worldpay

When businesses of all sizes depend on you for payment processing in person and online from anywhere in the world, you have to operate with the highest standards. For global payments leader Worldpay, that meant modernizing their entire data environment. Their vision: a data estate that enables real-time, high-speed transaction processing with unmatched reliability to help them process over 40 billion transactions annually across 146 countries and 135 currencies.

The results have redefined possibilities in fintech. Worldpay now manages massive transaction volumes seamlessly while delivering uncompromising data protection and business continuity. The organization has proven that infrastructure transformation is more than an IT goal—it’s a business imperative. Their leadership in the payments space demonstrates how data-driven modernization fuels innovation, elevates operational efficiency, and sets new industry benchmarks for security and reliability at global scale.

APJ: The Access Group

When The Access Group, a global SaaS leader supporting healthcare providers and local governments, needed to scale rapidly while maintaining critical services, the organization had a tall order: implement a high-performance infrastructure that can seamlessly (and securely) power essential applications that communities depend on daily, with zero compromises.

It’s an inspiring step forward for healthcare technology. The Access Group’s integrated software solutions empower healthcare professionals to deliver joined-up, preventative care that puts individuals at the center. The organization’s infrastructure seamlessly and reliably manages over 30,000 VMs and nearly 100,000 databases, many supporting vital health and social care services for the NHS. 

We’re thrilled to see how our Evergreen architecture has simplified The Access Group’s operations while allowing them to scale through aggressive growth. They’ve modernized their data protection strategies, facilitated multi-cloud environments, and demonstrated how technology transformation can directly enhance care delivery and improve lives across communities.

Cloud Champion Award: ServiceNow

ServiceNow is this year’s Cloud Champion for their visionary use of Pure Storage technology to support globally distributed, mission-critical workloads. As the AI platform for business transformation, ServiceNow’s customers look to the provider to power end-to-end agentic AI solutions across their one platform, one architecture, and one data model, while keeping their data protected. Their accomplishments in the last year truly exemplify AI-enabled cloud-first thinking in action. With the goals of empowering innovation, AI readiness, and operational simplicity, ServiceNow has leveraged FlashArray^™ and FlashBlade^® to achieve exceptional scalability, better than 99.999% availability, and ultra-low-latency performance. And, they’re able to deliver next-level cloud-first experiences to their customers sustainably: Racks of Pure Storage arrays provide double the capacity compared to their legacy storage units, halving their data center footprint, power, and cooling.

AI Warrior Award: Royal Bank of Canada

In an era of AI uncertainty, where many organizations are still experimenting, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is building an AI strategy to deliver real business value. By investing in a robust AI platform built on hyper-scalable technology, RBC demonstrates how visionary financial institutions can transform customer experiences in tangible ways.

From customer-facing tools like NOMI that provide personalized financial guidance to internal chatbots that enhance employee productivity, their commitment to AI innovation doesn’t just chase technology trends; it harnesses AI’s potential to set a powerful example for the financial services industry. Congrats to RBC for embracing AI with clear vision and purpose.

Cyber Hero Award: Red Lobster

When a beloved restaurant chain needs to modernize while ensuring uninterrupted service, data resilience becomes mission critical. In their words: “It’s the ability to go faster because the brakes on the car are better,” explains Shawn Harrs, Red Lobster’s CIO. Red Lobster embraced this challenge head-on by making data protection a cornerstone of their digital transformation strategy. They turned potential vulnerability into competitive advantage.

By implementing real-time data replication and creating distributed redundancies across their ecosystem, Red Lobster ensures that everything from customer reservations to employee shift management continues without disruption, even during system failures or cyber incidents. It’s a proactive approach to data resilience that isn’t just about defense—it’s about building customer trust and enabling innovation. 

Red Lobster’s use of advanced cybersecurity capabilities—including AI-powered threat prediction—demonstrates how a cybersecurity investment can be a foundation for operational excellence, not just risk management.

Pure Good – Sustainability Award: Comcast 

When Comcast faced the challenge of improving reliability and reducing their environmental impact across their massive video infrastructure, the organization hit a one-two punch: They replaced power-hungry spinning disks in their data center with efficient flash technology from Pure Storage, transforming both their customer experience and environmental footprint. It’s evidence that sustainability and performance truly do go hand in hand.

Comcast’s strategic adoption of FlashBlade for DVR storage ensures their Xfinity On Demand services are delivered flawlessly when families settle in for movie night, while simultaneously cutting energy consumption and e-waste at scale. Their initiative perfectly embodies how technology choices can create a positive environmental impact while enhancing the services people rely on every day.

Congrats to This Year’s Winners!

These award winners exemplify the transformative power of innovative data solutions. Their achievements demonstrate how forward-thinking organizations are leveraging technology to solve complex challenges, drive efficiency, and create new possibilities for their customers and industries. Congratulations to all the winners, and we look forward to their continued success and innovation in the years ahead!