{"id":97203,"date":"2020-12-29T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=97203"},"modified":"2025-12-12T14:56:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T22:56:49","slug":"2020-in-the-rearview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/2020-in-the-rearview\/","title":{"rendered":"2020 in the Rearview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Looking<\/p>\n

Writing a \u201cyear in review\u201d for 2020 feels more than a little challenging. After all, it\u2019s the first year in memory that became its own descriptor: The phrase \u201cbecause 2020\u201d has become the lead in or blanket explanation for just about any news story we never could have predicted at the beginning of this year.<\/p>\n

And yet, looking forward to 2021, I can\u2019t help but feel hopeful when I think about what we did with these hard times. Families rediscovered ways to stay connected and celebrate, neighbors and communities strengthened their bonds and their empathy for one another, and all sorts of businesses and organizations reached well beyond any idea of normal operations to provide services and support despite wild headwinds. Healthcare professionals, grocery stores, poll workers, restaurants, teachers\u2014the creativity and resilience shown in all they\u2019ve accomplished in a matter of months is humbling. If we can do all of this and more in a year of unprecedented challenges, imagine what we can do when we\u2019re no longer held back by a global pandemic?<\/p>\n

Looking closer to home, at the Backblaze community\u2014some 190 employees, as well as their families and pets, and our hundreds of thousands of customers and partners around the world\u2014I\u2019m similarly hopeful. In the grand scheme of the pandemic, we were lucky. Most of our work, our services, and our customers\u2019 work, can be accomplished remotely. And yet, I can\u2019t help but be inspired by the stories from this year.<\/p>\n

There were Andrew Davis and Alex Acosta, two-thirds of the IT operations team at Gladstone Institutes<\/a>\u2014a leader in biomedical research that rapidly shifted many of its labs\u2019 focus this year to studying the virus that causes COVID-19. After realizing their data was vulnerable, these two worked with our team<\/a> to move petabytes<\/a> of data off of tape and into the cloud, protecting all of it from ransomware and data loss.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Research in process at Gladstone Institutes. Photo Credit: Gladstone Institutes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And then there were C\u00e9dric Pierre-Louis, Director of Programming for the African Fiction Channels at THEMA, and Gareth Howells, Director of Out Point Media, who worked with our friends at iconik<\/a> to make collaboration and storytelling easier across the African Fiction Channels at THEMA\u2014a Canal+ Group company that has more than 180 television channels in its portfolio. The creative collaboration that goes into TV might not rival the life-saving potential of Gladstone\u2019s work, but I think everyone needed to escape through the power of media at some point this year.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Members of the Backblaze team, connecting remotely.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And if you had told me on March 7th<\/sup>\u2014the day after we made the decision to shift Backblaze to mostly 100% work from home status until the COVID-19 situation resolved\u2014that the majority of our team would work for 10 more months (and counting) from our kitchens and attics and garages\u2026and<\/em> that we\u2019d still launch the Backblaze S3 Compatible<\/a> API, clear an exabyte<\/a> of data under management, enable Cloud to Cloud Migration<\/a>, and announce so many other solutions and partnerships, I\u2019m not sure which part would have been harder to believe. But during a year when cloud storage<\/a> and computer backup<\/a> became increasingly important for businesses and individuals, I\u2019m truly proud of the way our team stepped up to support and serve our customers.<\/p>\n

These are just a sampling of the hopeful stories from our year. There\u2019s no question that there are still challenges in our future, but tallying what we\u2019ve been able to achieve while our Wi-Fi cut in and out, our pets and children rampaged through the house, while we swapped hard drives while masked and six feet distant from our coworkers, there\u2019s little question in my mind that we can meet them. Until then, thanks for your good work, your business, and sticking with us, together, while apart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2020 has been a year with its fair share of challenges\u2014we\u2019d like to thank our community for staying connected throughout these unprecedented times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[470],"class_list":["post-97203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backing-up","tag-newsletter","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Year of Resilience: Looking Back at Backblaze in 2020<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"2020 has been a year with its fair share of challenges\u2014we\u2019d like to thank our community for staying connected throughout these unprecedented times.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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