The sovereignty gap among Japanese companies comes into focus – Everpure presents a data strategy

By Ryoji Itako, Business Development Director, Japan and Korea, Acumen Intelligence

Pure Storage Japan (Everpure) announced its financial results, the findings of a global survey on data sovereignty, and new data management features for AI at its annual event, “Pure Accelerate 2026 Tokyo,” and during a press conference.

Revenue grew significantly, up 38-percent year-over-year, while profits rose 77-percent. Revenue from the “Evergreen//One” infrastructure service surpassed USD1 billion annually, and adoption by hyperscalers is also increasing.

The company was named a Leader in Gartner’s 2026 Magic Quadrant for Storage and is performing well in the Japanese market as well, securing the second-largest market share in the all-flash array segment according to IDC’s Q2 2026 report.

The company is focusing on the theme of “data sovereignty,” and a survey conducted in June 2026 gathered responses from a total of 2,100 respondents (including 300 from Japan) across eight countries in Western Europe and the Asia Pacific region. Globally, 90-percent recognise data sovereignty as central to their IT strategy, while 64-percent do not have a formal strategy in place. In Japan, 53-percent have not yet formulated a strategy, highlighting a striking gap between awareness and implementation. Eighty eight-percent of executives responded that “a lack of data sovereignty could become a matter of survival,” reflecting growing concerns about regulatory changes and geopolitical risks.

 Some point out that encryption alone does not resolve sovereignty issues, as there are hidden risks such as the possibility of data access by foreign jurisdictions and the non-public nature of court orders. Eighty-five percent of respondents indicated they would be willing to sacrifice some advanced features to ensure sovereignty, and companies are showing a tendency to focus on core functions with a “Minimum Viable Company” mindset.

The following recommendations were highlighted: (1) auditing and visualising data locations; (2) defining sovereignty on a risk-by-risk basis; (3) building a data sovereignty foundation for AI; (4) engaging executive leadership; and (5) formulating exit strategies that account for geopolitical risks. It was emphasised that sovereignty cannot be added as an afterthought and that “Sovereign by Design” (defining sovereignty at the design stage) is necessary.

New platforms and products for AI data management were introduced. Announcements included “Everpure Data Intelligence,” which visualises dark data as part of a shift toward a data-centric architecture; “DeepReduce,” which achieves a 2:1 reduction even with compressed data; improved SLAs for Evergreen//One, allowing purchases based on both performance and capacity; enhanced KVA that accelerates LLM inference by up to 20 times and integration with NVIDIA Dynamo; and “Intelligent Token Optimisation” for optimising token costs. Additionally, features have been added to enhance the operational efficiency of AI infrastructure, such as enhanced observability through Portworx and workload reallocation based on SLAs via Fusion.

Everpure’s co-founder and chief visionary officer, John Colgrove, pointed out that there is an excessive reliance on public clouds when selecting AI infrastructure, stating that in a rapidly changing field, locking into a single approach poses a risk. He also highlighted a case where the payback period for GPU investments was significantly shorter than expected, emphasising the performance improvements delivered by the company’s KV cache.

Overall, Everpure strongly advocates for the importance of data sovereignty while urging companies to build data-centric infrastructure for the AI era. While Japanese companies have a high level of awareness, their implementation has not kept pace, highlighting the urgent need for visualisation, sovereignty design, and the modernisation of AI infrastructure.