{"id":331,"date":"2011-06-08T14:06:22","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T21:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=331"},"modified":"2025-12-12T13:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T21:07:10","slug":"is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Backblaze Cloud Bigger than iCloud?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-cloud-size.jpg\" alt=\"Backblaze Cloud versus iCloud\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"bzdropcap\">Possibly.<\/p>\n<p>A customer yesterday asked, &#8220;Do you have any idea how big iCloud is?&#8221; I thought it was an interesting question and poked around.<\/p>\n<p>Two months ago it was reported that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2011-04-06-rumor-apple-buys-12-petabytes-of-video-storage-for-itunes.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple ordered 12 petabytes<\/a> of storage rumored to be used for its new North Carolina data center.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly Apple already has significant storage for their existing iTunes and MobileMe data and the North Carolina data center has room for much more than 12 <a href=\"\/blog\/petabytes-on-a-budget-10-years-and-counting\/\">petabytes<\/a>, but is this the storage that Apple expected to need to support the iCloud offering initially? Apple would not confirm, of course, but it does seem plausible now with iCloud announced and Steve Jobs talking about Apple&#8217;s massive new <a href=\"\/blog\/day-life-datacenter-part\/\">datacenter<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/apple-idatacenter-finished.jpg\" alt=\"Apple iCloud Datacenter\" \/><br \/>\nImage source: <a href=\"\/blog\/choosing-data-center\/\">Data Center Knowledge<\/a><\/p>\n<p>At Backblaze we hit <a href=\"\/blog\/10-petabytes-visualized\/\">10 petabytes<\/a> of customer cloud storage by the end of 2010 and now we just crossed <strong>15 petabytes<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s becoming challenging to take a good photo, but here is what 15 petabytes of <a href=\"\/blog\/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Backblaze Storage Pods<\/a> looks like:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-photo-of-backblaze-cabinets.jpg\" alt=\"15 petabytes\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So does Backblaze have more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/cloud-storage\">cloud storage<\/a> than Apple for iCloud? Perhaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Possibly. A customer yesterday asked, &#8220;Do you have any idea how big iCloud is?&#8221; I thought it was an interesting question and poked around. Two months ago it was reported that Apple ordered 12 petabytes of storage rumored to be used for its new North Carolina data center. Certainly Apple already has significant storage for&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Is the Backblaze Cloud Bigger than iCloud?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[468],"class_list":["post-331","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 v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>iCloud vs. Backblaze: Is the Backblaze Cloud Bigger than iCloud?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Possibly. A customer yesterday asked, &quot;Do you have any idea how big iCloud is?&quot; I thought it was an interesting question and poked around. Two months ago\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"iCloud vs. Backblaze: Is the Backblaze Cloud Bigger than iCloud?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Possibly. A customer yesterday asked, &quot;Do you have any idea how big iCloud is?&quot; I thought it was an interesting question and poked around. Two months ago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/\" \/>\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=\"2011-06-08T21:06:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-12T21:07:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-cloud-size.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\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=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"iCloud vs. Backblaze: Is the Backblaze Cloud Bigger than iCloud?","description":"Possibly. A customer yesterday asked, \"Do you have any idea how big iCloud is?\" I thought it was an interesting question and poked around. Two months ago","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"iCloud vs. Backblaze: Is the Backblaze Cloud Bigger than iCloud?","og_description":"Possibly. A customer yesterday asked, \"Do you have any idea how big iCloud is?\" I thought it was an interesting question and poked around. Two months ago","og_url":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/","og_site_name":"Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage &amp; Cloud Backup","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze","article_published_time":"2011-06-08T21:06:22+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-12-12T21:07:10+00:00","og_image":[{"width":560,"height":280,"url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-cloud-size.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Gleb Budman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@backblaze","twitter_site":"@backblaze","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Gleb Budman","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/"},"author":{"name":"Gleb Budman","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9267dd4f4f7d705914ea0047cc0ff8bf"},"headline":"Is the Backblaze Cloud Bigger than iCloud?","datePublished":"2011-06-08T21:06:22+00:00","dateModified":"2025-12-12T21:07:10+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/"},"wordCount":177,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-cloud-size.jpg","keywords":["B2Cloud"],"articleSection":["Cloud Storage"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/","url":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/","name":"iCloud vs. Backblaze: Is the Backblaze Cloud Bigger than iCloud?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/is-the-backblaze-cloud-bigger-than-icloud\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-cloud-size.jpg","datePublished":"2011-06-08T21:06:22+00:00","dateModified":"2025-12-12T21:07:10+00:00","description":"Possibly. 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Gleb has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009 and as chairperson since January 2021. Prior to Backblaze, Gleb was the senior director of product management at SonicWall and the vice president of products at MailFrontier, which was acquired by SonicWall. Before that, he served in a senior position at Kendara, which was acquired by Excite@Home, and previously founded and successfully exited two other startup companies.","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/author\/gleb\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-cloud-size.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}