Company:Backblaze

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Short description: Backup and cloud hosting company
Backblaze
TypePublic
NASDAQ: BLZE
Industry
FoundedApril 20, 2007; 17 years ago (2007-04-20)
Founders
  • Gleb Budman
  • Billy Ng
  • Nilay Patel
  • Brian Wilson
  • Casey Jones
  • Tim Nufire
  • Damon Uyeda
HeadquartersSan Mateo, California, U.S.
Key people
  • Gleb Budman (CEO)
  • Brian Wilson (CTO)
  • Frank P. Patchel (CFO)
  • Kevin Gay (CMO)
Products
RevenueIncrease US$67.5 million (2021)
Decrease US$−18.8 million (2021)
Decrease US$−21.7 million (2021)
Total assetsIncrease US$163.6 million (2021)
Total equityIncrease US$95.5 million (2021)
Number of employees
270 (December 2021)
Websitebackblaze.com
Footnotes / references
[1]

Backblaze, Inc. is an American cloud storage and data backup company based in San Mateo, California. Founded in 2007 by Gleb Budman,[2] Billy Ng, Nilay Patel, Brian Wilson, Tim Nufire, Damon Uyeda, and Casey Jones,[3] its two main products are their B2 Cloud Storage and Computer Backup services, targeted at both business and personal markets.

History

Backblaze was established in 2007 in San Mateo, California.[4] In 2008, the company released online backup services to support PCs running Apple's macOS and Microsoft Windows.[4]

In October 2021, Backblaze filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the symbol BLZE.[4] In November, the company launched its public IPO.[5]

Backblaze and Catalogic, a data protection vendor, announced their partnership in March 2022.[6]

Since 2013, Backblaze has reported quarterly reliability statistics for its data center hard drives, showing annual failure rates for each model.[7][8]

Products

Cloud backup

Backblaze's first product was its computer backup, offering users to back up their computer data continuously and automatically with a monthly subscription service. The service makes use of AES encryption for security, and uses data compression and bandwidth optimization to reduce upload and download times. Files that need to be restored can be delivered in the form of a digital download[9] or on an external hard drive.[10] File versioning and history is available with a 30-day cap or an additional cost per month.

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

In September 2015, Backblaze launched a new product, B2 Cloud Storage. Being an infrastructure as a service (IaaS), it is targeted at software integration for different kinds of businesses.[11] It directly competes with similar services, such as Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.[12] In April 2018, Backblaze announced cloud computing partnerships[13] that directly connect Backblaze's data centers with its partners, Packet and ServerCentral.

In May 2020, Backblaze released an Amazon S3-compatible API, allowing customers to use existing tools and applications with B2 Cloud Storage without rewriting them.[14] In May 2022, Backblaze released its cloud replication services, which allow customers to back up and store data in a location that is geographically separate from the data's primary location.[15][16]

Technology

Data centers

Backblaze has five data centers; four in the United States and one Europe. Two U.S. data centers are in Northern California near Sacramento, one is in Phoenix, Arizona, and in December 2022, Backblaze took residence in the CoreSite data center in Reston, Virginia.[17] Backblaze's data center in the European Union is located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.[18] In September 2022, Backblaze contracted 1MW of capacity at Nautilus's floating data center in Stockton, California.[19]

Redundancy

In order to increase redundancy, data uploaded onto Backblaze's data center is sharded into 17 data pieces and three parity shards for each file. Parity shard bits are computed by the Reed–Solomon error correction algorithm. The shards are stored in 20 different drives, each in a separate cabinet to increase resilience to a power loss to an entire cabinet, or other physically based issue. Backblaze states that its 'Vault' architecture is designed with 99.999999999% annual durability.[20]

Encryption

For computer backup and the security of their users backups, Backblaze uses a combination of AES and SSL encryption to protect user data. Data is stored in Backblaze storage using Reed-Solomon erasure coding[21] and encrypted with the user's private key, which is secured with the user's password and username. The default encryption of private keys is done server side, which is unlikely to protect against government subpoena or a serious data breach.[citation needed] Users desiring additional security and privacy can use the optional private encryption key (PEK),[22] but the PEK passphrase is sent to the server when it is initially set, and must be sent again to restore any data.[23]

Encryption for their B2 storage is handled entirely by the user and client software to manage the stored data, making it immune to government subpoena or data breach and protecting the data during transfer and ultimate storage in Backblaze's data centers.

Storage Pod open design

A server case using the open design of the Storage Pod

In 2009 and 2011, the company released CAD drawings of the computer case used by the storage servers in its datacenters. With commercial off-the-shelf components such as x64 processors, disks, and motherboards, high-density storage servers can be built at a lower cost than commercial ones.[24] The company has since made six iterations of the design over the years.

References

  1. ↑ "Backblaze, Inc. 2021 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 28 March 2022. pp. 6, 54–55. https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1462056/000162828022007434/blze-20211231.htm. 
  2. ↑ Mellor, Chris (2022-12-13). "Back up a minute: Backblaze on SMR, storage tiers, and Web3" (in en-US). https://blocksandfiles.com/2022/12/13/backblaze-ceo/. 
  3. ↑ "Backblaze Team". https://www.backblaze.com/company/team.html. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Novet, Jordan (18 October 2021). "Amazon cloud storage challenger Backblaze files to go public" (in en). https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/cloud-object-storage-company-backblaze-files-to-go-public.html. 
  5. ↑ "Backblaze Stock Could Be The Next Cloudflare In The Making (NASDAQ:BLZE)" (in en). 22 November 2021. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4471154-backblaze-could-be-the-next-cloudflare-in-the-making. 
  6. ↑ Fay, Joe (2022-03-14). "Catalogic partners with Backblaze to tackle ransomware and tape maintenance" (in en-US). https://blocksandfiles.com/2022/03/14/catalogic-partners-with-backblaze-to-tackle-ransomware-and-tape-maintenance/. 
  7. ↑ "Backblaze HD reliability stats show oldies can be goodies" (in en-US). 2022-02-01. https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/01/backblaze_hd_reliability_stats_show/. 
  8. ↑ "Backup Company Reveals Hard Drive Failure Rates For 2022" (in en-US). 2023-01-31. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/backblaze-hdd-failure-rates-2022. 
  9. ↑ "Backblaze: Online Backup With Time Machine's Finesse". TechCrunch. 2 June 2008. https://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/backblaze-online-backup-with-time-machines-finesse/. Retrieved 28 March 2016. 
  10. ↑ "Larger Longer Faster Better". BackBlaze. 17 January 2019. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-cloud-backup-v6/. Retrieved 24 February 2019. 
  11. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (2016-06-28). "Backblaze launches its low-cost cloud storage service out of beta" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/28/backblaze-launches-its-low-cost-cloud-storage-service-and-s3-competitor-out-of-beta/. 
  12. ↑ "B2 Cloud Storage Pricing". 2 January 2018. https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html. 
  13. ↑ "Backblaze Announces B2 Compute Partnerships". 3 April 2018. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/introducing-cloud-compute-services/. Retrieved 3 April 2018. 
  14. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (2020-05-04). "Backblaze challenges AWS by making its cloud storage S3 compatible" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/04/backblaze-challenges-aws-by-making-its-cloud-storage-s3-compatible/. 
  15. ↑ Sawers, Paul (2022-06-07). "Backblaze launches 'cloud replication' to help companies store and sync data across regions" (in en-US). https://venturebeat.com/cloud/backblaze-launches-cloud-replication-to-help-companies-store-and-sync-data-across-regions/. 
  16. ↑ "Backblaze B2 offers cross-continent Cloud Replication service" (in en). https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252521171/Backblaze-B2-offers-cross-continent-Cloud-Replication-service. 
  17. ↑ "Backblaze Opens New US East Data Region". globenewswire.com (Press release). 13 December 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  18. ↑ "Backblaze opens data center in Amsterdam, retains same pricing as US". 27 August 2019. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/backblaze-opens-data-center-in-amsterdam-retains-same-pricing-as-us/. 
  19. ↑ Butler, Georgia (2022-09-09). "Backblaze contracts 1MW of capacity at Nautilus's floating data center in Stockton, California" (in en). https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/backblaze-contracts-1mw-of-capacity-at-nautiluss-floating-data-center-in-stockton-california/. 
  20. ↑ "Backblaze Durability is 99.999999999% — And Why It Doesn't Matter". 17 July 2018. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-storage-durability/. Retrieved 17 July 2018. 
  21. ↑ "Reed Solomon Erasure Coding Web Page for downloading files". https://www.backblaze.com/open-source-reed-solomon.html. 
  22. ↑ "Online Backup Security & Encryption". Backblaze. https://www.backblaze.com/backup-encryption.html. Retrieved 23 March 2016. 
  23. ↑ "Security Question Round-up!". Backblaze. 12 September 2017. https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217664798-Security-Question-Round-up-. Retrieved 8 November 2019. 
  24. ↑ "Petabytes on a Budget v2.0:Revealing More Secrets". 20 July 2011. http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/. Retrieved 28 March 2016. 

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