{"id":105157,"date":"2022-03-23T08:55:37","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T15:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=105157"},"modified":"2025-07-18T14:09:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T21:09:55","slug":"how-to-scale-a-storage-heavy-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/how-to-scale-a-storage-heavy-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Scale a Storage-heavy Startup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-105159\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/bb-bh-CloudSpotai.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1440\" height=\"820\" srcset=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/bb-bh-CloudSpotai.png 1440w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/bb-bh-CloudSpotai-300x171.png 300w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/bb-bh-CloudSpotai-1024x583.png 1024w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/bb-bh-CloudSpotai-768x437.png 768w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/bb-bh-CloudSpotai-560x319.png 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1440px) 100vw, 1440px\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"bzdropcap\">No developer likes to feel stuck with a cloud vendor, especially when you\u2019re paying for the trap. Being locked in because the expense of moving is prohibitive or the risk of service disruption is too great can be singularly frustrating. Unfortunately, Gavin Wade, Founder and CEO of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/case-studiescloudspot\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CloudSpot<\/a>, found himself in exactly that position.<\/p>\n<p>Gavin shared how he restructured his cloud architecture (containing more than 700TB of images under management), enabling him to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cut storage costs in half.<\/li>\n<li>Slow the rate at which storage costs compound by half.<\/li>\n<li>Cut data transfer costs by 90%.<\/li>\n<li>Lower breakeven customer volume.<\/li>\n<li>Increase margins.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"abstract\" style=\"line-height: 1.8; margin: 24px 12px; padding: 24px 12px 10px 12px;\">\n<p><strong>What Is CloudSpot?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cloudspot.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CloudSpot<\/a> is a software as a service (SaaS) business platform based in Irvine, CA that makes professional photographers\u2019 lives easier. The CloudSpot app allows photographers to deliver images digitally to clients in beautiful galleries through a seamless system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-105161\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1440\" height=\"620\" srcset=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-1.png 1440w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-1-300x129.png 300w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-1-1024x441.png 1024w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-1-768x331.png 768w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-1-560x241.png 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1440px) 100vw, 1440px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Amazon Web Services gave CloudSpot free credits for storage. When those credits ran out, CloudSpot would have happily left to avoid escalating storage costs but felt trapped by high egress fees.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWe had a few internal conversations where we concluded that we were stuck with Amazon. That\u2019s never a good feeling in business.\u201d<br \/>\n\u2014Gavin Wade, Founder &amp; CEO, CloudSpot<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2><strong>How CloudSpot Solved for Escalating Storage Costs<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In the short term, CloudSpot\u2019s development team, led by their vice president of engineering, took a few key steps to manage costs:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>They untangled their monolithic system into a cluster of <a href=\"\/blog\/what-are-microservices\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">microservices<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>They moved to a <a href=\"\/blog\/what-is-kubernetes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kubernetes<\/a> environment where images upload directly to storage, then CloudSpot\u2019s microservices retroactively query the data they need.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The transition to microservices made their infrastructure more nimble, but Gavin still had to reluctantly cut key promotional offers like free migration for prospective customers in order to maintain margins.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>When Cost-cutting Measures Still Don\u2019t Suffice<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Even after optimizing workflows, storage costs continued to snowball. Namely:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The service grew\u2014customers were uploading five times the previous year\u2019s volume.<\/li>\n<li>Gavin wanted to position the company for triple-digit growth in the upcoming year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>They decided to move their production data to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. The potential ROI of switching to Backblaze B2 was too substantial to ignore for a data-heavy startup, and Backblaze\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/b2\/solutions\/datatransfer\/cloud-to-cloud.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cloud to Cloud Migration<\/a> service allowed them to move 700TB of data in one day with zero transfer fees.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Migrating Storage Clouds Without Service Disruption<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>CloudSpot\u2019s data is accessed frequently, and the CloudSpot development team had to make sure customers saw no disruptions. To do so, they supported both environments\u2014on Amazon S3 and Backblaze B2\u2014simultaneously for one week to ensure everything was working. Then, they disabled uploads to Amazon S3 and redirected new uploads to Backblaze B2.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIt was like changing the tires on a car while it\u2019s flying down the road at 100 mph,\u201d but a change that resulted in no loss of operational efficiency, speed, or reliability.<br \/>\n\u2014Gavin Wade, Founder &amp; CEO, CloudSpot<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2><strong>Cloud to Cloud Migration Is Not Out of Reach<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Like many developers, Gavin thought he was trapped in a walled garden with Amazon S3. Improving CloudSpot\u2019s workflows unlocked the switch to Backblaze B2, enabling CloudSpot to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Structure workflows using best-of-breed providers.<\/li>\n<li>Reintroduce free migration.<\/li>\n<li>Grow margins.<\/li>\n<li>Demonstrate savvy decision-making to future investors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-105162\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1440\" height=\"843\" srcset=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-2.png 1440w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-2-300x176.png 300w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-2-1024x599.png 1024w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-2-768x450.png 768w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/CloudSpot-2-560x328.png 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1440px) 100vw, 1440px\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cSoftware margins are expected to be high. If you can take a big cut of that, it allows you to scale more rapidly. It just makes our story so much better, especially as a SaaS business looking to scale, grow, and raise capital.\u201d<br \/>\n\u2014Gavin Wade, Founder &amp; CEO, CloudSpot<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2><strong>Unlocking Capacity to Scale With Backblaze B2<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Read more about how CloudSpot <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/case-studiescloudspot\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">overcame vendor lock-in to realize exponential growth<\/a>, and check out our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/b2\/solutions\/datatransfer\/cloud-to-cloud.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cloud to Cloud Migration offer<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/cloud-storage\/integrations?use-case=sync\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">partners<\/a>\u2014we\u2019ll pay for your data transfer if you need to move more than 10TB out of Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learn how SaaS business platform, CloudSpot, migrated from Amazon S3 to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage without service disruption and unlocked exponential growth for their business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":105159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[468],"class_list":["post-105157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-storage","tag-b2cloud","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to Scale a Storage-heavy Startup<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Startups with high levels of storage requirements can sometimes be extremely expensive. How can you cut your costs for a storage-heavy startup?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Scale a Storage-heavy Startup\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Startups with high levels of storage requirements can sometimes be extremely expensive. How can you cut your costs for a storage-heavy startup?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/how-to-scale-a-storage-heavy-startup\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage &amp; Cloud Backup\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-03-23T15:55:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-07-18T21:09:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/bb-bh-CloudSpotai.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1440\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"820\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Molly Clancy\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Molly Clancy\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How to Scale a Storage-heavy Startup","description":"Startups with high levels of storage requirements can sometimes be extremely expensive. 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