Backblaze just returned from exhibiting at NAB in Las Vegas, April 9-12, where the response to our recent announcements was tremendous. In case you missed the news, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage continues to extend its lead as the most affordable, high performance cloud on the planet.
Backblaze’s News at NAB
- Our New Cloud Computing Partners for B2 Cloud Storage
- You now can use cloud computing with data stored in Backblaze B2! Directly connected for low latency, transfers between Backblaze B2 and our computing partners are $0.00.
- Backblaze Fireball: Our Backblaze B2 Rapid Ingest Service
- We’ve officially introduced our Backblaze Fireball—a 70TB hardware appliance used for rapid ingest of large data sets into Backblaze B2.
- The Backblaze B2 Snapshot Return Refund Program
- The only refundable cloud storage rapid data egress service.
- Backblaze B2 Download Pricing Reduced to one cent per GB
- We cut B2 Cloud Storage download pricing by 50%, to one cent per GB.
The Backblaze booth just before opening
What We Were Asked at NAB
Our booth was busy from start to finish with attendees interested in learning more about Backblaze and B2 Cloud Storage. Here are the questions we were asked most often in the booth.
Q. How long has Backblaze been in business?
A. The company was founded in 2007. Today, we have over 500PB of data from customers in over 150 countries.
Q. Where is your data stored?
A. We have data centers in California and Arizona and expect to expand to Europe by the end of the year.
Q. How can your services be so inexpensive?
A. Backblaze’s goal from the beginning was to offer cloud backup and storage that was easy to use and affordable. All the existing options were simply too expensive to be viable, so we created our own infrastructure. Our purpose-built storage system—the Storage Pod—is recognized as one of the most cost efficient storage platforms available.
Q. Tell me about your hardware.
A. Backblaze’s Storage Pods hold 60 HDDs each, containing as much as 720TB data per Pod, stored using Reed-Solomon error correction. Storage Pods are arranged in Tomes with twenty Storage Pods making up a Vault.
Q. Where do you fit in the data workflow?
A. People typically use B2 Cloud Storage for archiving completed projects. All data is readily available for download from Backblaze B2, making it more convenient than off-line storage. In addition, DAM and MAM systems such as CatDV, axle.ai, Cantemo, and others have integrated with B2 Cloud Storage to store raw images behind the proxies.
Q. Who uses Backblaze B2 in the M&E business?
A. KLRU-TV, the PBS station in Austin, Texas, uses Backblaze B2 to archive their entire 43 year catalog of Austin City Limits episodes and related materials. WunderVu, the production house for Pixvana, uses B2 Cloud Storage to back up and archive their local storage systems on which they build virtual reality experiences for their customers.
Q. You’re the company that publishes the hard drive stats, right?
A. Yes, we are!
Were You at NAB?
If you were, we hope you stopped by the Backblaze booth to say hello. We’d like to hear what you saw at the show that was interesting or exciting. Please tell us in the comments.
