It’s hard to miss the increasing frequency of phishing attacks in the news. Earlier this year, a major phishing attack targeted Google Docs users, and attempted to compromise at least one million Google Docs accounts. Experts say the “phish” was convincing and sophisticated, and even people who thought they would never be fooled by a… Continue reading Top Ten Ways to Protect Yourself Against Phishing Attacks
Introducing Our Content Director: Roderick
As Backblaze continues to grow, and as we go down the path of sharing our stories, we fid ourselves in need of someone that can wrangle our content calendar, write blog posts, and come up with interesting ideas that we can share with our readers and fans. We put out the call, and found Roderick!… Continue reading Introducing Our Content Director: Roderick
Why Consumer Design Is Good for Business
We know that business users sometimes ask, “Why can’t business software be as easy to use as consumer software?” At Backblaze, we believe it can be. We started our business to make backup easier for everyone, knowing that the primary reason why people don’t back up is that it is too complicated and too intimidating.… Continue reading Why Consumer Design Is Good for Business
How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers
If you launch your startup and no one knows, did you actually launch? As mentioned in my last post, our initial launch target was to get a 1,000 people to use our service. But how do you get even 1,000 people to sign up for your service when no one knows who you are?
Two-factor Verification via Auth Apps
Security is something we take very seriously at Backblaze. All Backblaze backups occur over HTTPS, are encrypted, and we even have private encryption key functionality available for those who wish to add another layer of protection. In 2015, we added two-factor verification via SMS to our service, which allowed customers to use a mobile device… Continue reading Two-factor Verification via Auth Apps
The Cost of Cloud Storage
This week, we’re celebrating the one year anniversary of the launch of Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. Today’s post is focused on giving you a peek behind the curtain about the costs of providing cloud storage.
Desert to Data in Seven Days—Our Phoenix Data Center
We are pleased to announce that Backblaze is now storing some of our customers’ data in our newest data center in Phoenix. Let’s take you through the process of getting the Phoenix data center up and running.
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage on a Budget: One Year Later
A year ago, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage came out of beta and became available for everyone to use. We were pretty excited, even though it seemed like everyone and their brother had a cloud storage offering. Now that we are a year down the road let’s see how B2 has fared in the real world of tight budgets, maxed-out engineering schedules, insanely funded competition, and more. Spoiler alert: We’re still pretty excited…
From Idea to Launch: Getting Your First Customers
After deciding to build an unlimited backup service and developing our own storage platform, the next step was to get customers and feedback. Not all customers are created equal. Let’s talk about the types, and when and how to attract them.
Balancing Convenience and Privacy
By adding a convenience feature, we realized that there was potential for user privacy to be violated. As we worked through the use cases, we faced potential conflict between two of our guiding principles.
An Open Letter to Microsoft: A 64-bit OS Is Better Than a 32-bit OS
Editor’s Note: Our Co-founder & CTO, Brian Wilson, was working on a few minor performance enhancements and bug fixes (Inherit Backup State is a lot faster now). We got a version of this note from him late one night and thought it was worth sharing. There are a few absolutes in life—death, taxes, and that… Continue reading An Open Letter to Microsoft: A 64-bit OS Is Better Than a 32-bit OS
Preserving the Music of Austin City Limits
KLRU-TV, Austin PBS created Austin City Limits 42 years ago and has produced it ever since. Austin City Limits is the longest-running music series in television history. Over the years, KLRU accumulated over 550 episodes and thousands of hours of unaired footage stored on videotape. When KLRU decided to preserve their collection they turned to… Continue reading Preserving the Music of Austin City Limits
Data Backup: Minimizing the Impact of Ransomware
The old adage, “Backing up your data is important to plan for, as hard drives inevitably fail” is as true as ever, but equally true now is the need to back up your data to thwart the increasing frequency of ransomware attacks. What Is Ransomware? Ransomware is malicious software that blocks access to your data… Continue reading Data Backup: Minimizing the Impact of Ransomware
Backup Awareness Survey, Our 10th Year
This is the 10th year Backblaze has designated June as Backup Awareness Month. It is also the 10th year of our annual Backup Awareness Survey. Each year, the survey has asked the question, “How often do you back up all of the data on your computer?” As they have done since the beginning, the good… Continue reading Backup Awareness Survey, Our 10th Year
Managing a Remote Workforce
While Backblaze has customers all around the globe, the company itself is a pretty small enterprise with just over 50 employees. Many of those employees are actually remote. 75% of Backblaze employees work from the main Backblaze office (San Mateo), 15% are data center employees, and 10% are working remotely full-time. Many companies that were… Continue reading Managing a Remote Workforce
Building a Competitive Moat: Turning Challenges Into Advantages
In my previous post on how Backblaze got started, I mentioned that “just because we knew the right solution, didn’t mean that it was possible.” I’ll dig into that here. The right solution was to offer unlimited backup for $5 per month. The price of storage at the time, however, would have likely forced us to price our unlimited backup service at 2x – 5x that.
We were faced with a difficult challenge – compromise a fundamental feature of our product by removing the unlimited storage element, increase our price point in order to cover our costs but likely limit our potential customer base, seek funding in order to run at a loss while we built market share with a hope/prayer we could make a profit in the future, or find another way (huge unknown that might not have a solution). Below I’ll dig into the options that were available, the paths we tried, and how this challenge completely transformed our company and ended up being our greatest technological advantage.
Wanted: Content Director
Thank you for your interest, but this position has been filled. Please check out our jobs page for additional great opportunities at Backblaze. Backblaze is looking to hire a full time content director. This role is an essential piece of our team, reporting directly to our VP of marketing. As the hiring manager, I’d like… Continue reading Wanted: Content Director
Confessions of a Digital Pack Rat: Almost Half a Petabyte and Still Growing
What do you do when you have almost half a petabyte of data? That’s the situation in which Michael Oskierko finds himself. He’s a self-proclaimed digital pack rat who’s amassed more than 390TB total, and it’s continuing to grow. Based in Texas, Michael Oskierko is a financial analyst by day. But he’s set up one… Continue reading Confessions of a Digital Pack Rat: Almost Half a Petabyte and Still Growing