If you’re in charge of IT for a public sector entity, you know the budgeting and procurement process doesn’t lend itself well to buying cloud services. But, today, the life of a public sector CIO just got a whole lot easier. Through a new partnership with Carahsoft, public sector customers can now leverage their existing state, local, and federal buying programs to access Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.
We’re not the only cloud storage provider available through Carahsoft, the Master Government Aggregator™ for the IT industry, but we are the easy, affordable, trusted solution among providers in their ecosystem. Read on to learn more about the partnership.
The Right Cloud Solution at the Right Time
For state and local governments, federal agencies, healthcare providers, and higher education institutions, the pandemic introduced challenges that required cloud scalability—remote work and increased demand for public services, to name two. But due to procurement procedures and budgeting incompatibility, adopting the cloud isn’t always a smooth process for the public sector.
The public sector typically uses a CapEx model to budget for IT services. The cloud’s pay-as-you-go pricing model can be at odds with this budgeting method. Public sector CIOs are also typically required to use established buying programs to purchase services, which many cloud providers are not a part of.
Further, recent research shows that while public sector cloud adoption has increased, a “budget snapback” driven by return to office IT expenses is prompting CIOs in this field to optimize their cloud spend. Public sector institutions are seeking additional value in their cloud budgets, and clamoring for a way to purchase those services through existing programs and channels.
“Public sector decision-makers reference budget, pricing models, and transparency as their biggest barriers to cloud adoption. That’s why this partnership is so exciting: Our services come at a fraction of the price of other options, and we’ve long been known for our transparent, trusted approach to working with customers.”
—Nilay Patel, VP of Sales, Backblaze
Bringing Capacity-based Cloud Services to the Public Sector
Backblaze, through the partnership with Carahsoft—which was enabled by our recent launch of a capacity-based pricing bundle, Backblaze B2 Reserve—solves both the budgeting and procurement challenges public sector CIOs are facing.
The partnership brings Backblaze services to state, local, and federal buying programs in a model they prefer at a fraction of the price of traditional cloud storage providers. It’s an affordable, easy solution for public sector CIOs seeking to optimize cloud spend in the wake of the pandemic.
“Backblaze’s ease of use, affordability, and transparency are just some of the major advantages of their robust cloud backup and storage services. We look forward to working with Backblaze and our reseller partners to help agencies better protect and secure their business data.”
—Evan Slack, Director of Sales for Emerging Cloud and Virtualization Technologies, Carahsoft
About Carahsoft
Carahsoft Technology Corp. is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, supporting public sector organizations across federal, state, and local government agencies and education and healthcare markets. As the Master Government Aggregator® for vendor partners, Carahsoft delivers solutions for cybersecurity, multi-cloud, DevSecOps, big data, artificial intelligence, open-source, customer experience, and more. Working with resellers, systems integrators, and consultants, Carahsoft’s sales and marketing teams provide industry leading IT products, services, and training through hundreds of contract vehicles.
About Backblaze B2 Reserve
Backblaze B2 Reserve packages cloud storage in a capacity-based bundle with an annualized SKU which works seamlessly with channel billing models. The offering also provides seller incentives, Tera-grade support, and expanded migration services to empower the channel’s acceleration of cloud storage adoption and revenue growth. Customers can purchase Backblaze B2 through channel partners, starting at 20TB.
A Public Sector Case Study: Kings County Modernizes With Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
With a looming bill to replace aging tapes and an out-of-warranty tape drive, the Kings County IT department modernized their IT infrastructure by moving to the cloud for backups. With help from Backblaze, Kings County natively tiered backups from their preferred backup software to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, enabling them to implement incremental backups, reduce their overall IT footprint and costs, and save about 150 hours of staff time per year.
Read the full case study here.
How to Get Started With Backblaze B2 and Carahsoft
For resellers interested in offering Backblaze services, it is business as usual if you currently have an account with Carahsoft. Those with immediate quote requests should email partnerships@backblaze.com for further details. For any resellers who do not have an account with Carahsoft and would like the ability to sell Backblaze services, follow this link to create a Carahsoft account.
