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Backblaze S-1 IPO

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Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#201

Post by ksec »

ethbr0 wrote: post #186
ahartmetz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because Backblaze's margins are far too low for Apple, so Apple would have to do "Backblaze, but overpriced", which could look bad - or be content with low margin.

I'm curious about Apple's cloud strategy. "Cloud, but only for iUsers" seems... weird, from a scaling perspective? Granted, there are more Apple device customers than any other possible bucket, but is it enough to drive economies down to the point of competing on cloud pricing? And if not, then they're still stealing iDevice margin to price cloud competitively.

> but is it enough to drive economies down to the point of competing on cloud pricing?

More than Enough. When you have 1 Billion iPhone customer who are also in the highest paying basket. The purchasing power is likely over 50% of the total market. As similarly shown in App Store market.

The problem is Apple has always had an Asset Light strategy. Keeping many Datacenter of Storage running just isn't their thing. That is why they are still relying on Azure, AWS for iCloud Storage.

>And if not, then they're still stealing iDevice margin to price cloud competitively.

Currently the iCloud Services ( or in fact all Services Revenue ) are masked by App Store profit and Google's Search Engine Deal. i.e most of their other Services like Apple Music, iCloud, News+ are low margin business but are used to dilute down their extremely high margin profits from App Store and Search Engine.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#202

Post by UI_at_80x24 »

Moral_ wrote: post #189
helloworld11 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Backblaze but couldn't get over its insistence on first backing up my entire primary hard drive instead of allowing me to simply choose directly my most important files in my external drives, or from wherever I prefer. Seems arbitrarily forceful to me, though the pricing and security options are good. Also, the interface of deselecting things to not back up via exclusions, instead of simply being able to spec…

This is the exact reason why I didn't use backblaze, that and their linux support. I didn't want my entire PC backed up, and wanted to hand select a few hefty folders.

You can specify what gets backed up by using rclone.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#203

Post by mkr-hn »

frakkingcylons wrote: post #194
cupofjoakim wrote: post #155

A friend in the music industry told me about a very cool backblaze moment. They were out touring with an artist in some remote country, I think it was Kazakhstan, when the artists macbook suffered hard drive failure. Everything was backed up on backblaze, but the internet connections they had available was simply too unreliable to get the backup down. They contacted backblaze and for a price that was high (but not in…

Why’d they send a person and not just the hard drives? Was it because they couldn’t get it there fast enough by normal air cargo so they used commercial passenger flights instead?

If I were on a 5 stop tour and my choice was between "hand-delivered by a Backblaze employee" and "left to fate with multiple countries' postal and customs services," I would choose the hand delivery every time. The nearest data center to Kazakhstan is in Amsterdam.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#204

Post by mbesto »

ramesh31 wrote: post #90
mbesto wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. They've taken very little outside funding (mostly venture debt and a series A), and have been around for 10+ years. They'll likely get a better valuation from the public market than they would privately and the founders who have been waiting 10 years can take some money off of the table. Smart move IMO.

>They'll likely get a better valuation from the public market than they would privately and the founders who have been waiting 10 years can take some money off of the table. This is really all there is to it. You don't actually have to build a business anymore to get rich. You just put together something that looks like one, pay yourself a handsome salary for 10 years, then cash out and retire to New Zealand. Sweet g…

> Sweet gig if you can get it.

Did you also start a business from the ground up and run it to the size that generates $50M in revenue? What exactly about Backblaze is a "sweet gig if you can get it"...achieving this is not trivial...

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#205

Post by cupofjoakim »

frakkingcylons wrote: post #194
cupofjoakim wrote: post #155

A friend in the music industry told me about a very cool backblaze moment. They were out touring with an artist in some remote country, I think it was Kazakhstan, when the artists macbook suffered hard drive failure. Everything was backed up on backblaze, but the internet connections they had available was simply too unreliable to get the backup down. They contacted backblaze and for a price that was high (but not in…

Why’d they send a person and not just the hard drives? Was it because they couldn’t get it there fast enough by normal air cargo so they used commercial passenger flights instead?

We're talking unreleased songs on that drive and high value assets surrounding the act. Both the sensitive nature of the data as well as the speed of delivery are better handled by having a person fly them in personally.

If it wasn't for the content and that they needed it ASAP I think regular air cargo would've sufficed.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#206

Post by cupofjoakim »

wyclif wrote: post #172
cupofjoakim wrote: post #155

A friend in the music industry told me about a very cool backblaze moment. They were out touring with an artist in some remote country, I think it was Kazakhstan, when the artists macbook suffered hard drive failure. Everything was backed up on backblaze, but the internet connections they had available was simply too unreliable to get the backup down. They contacted backblaze and for a price that was high (but not in…

It's amazing how many musicians today are dependent on data storage for live performances.

Yeah, I get ya. Much music is made directly on laptops, and if you figure the surrounding stuff as well (sound samples, animated backdrops, VST's etc) the assets required for a gig can be several GiBs big.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#207

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

eikenberry wrote: post #125
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your process for backing up to B2 using borg? I'm currently doing borg backups to a local server, then using restic to back up my borg backups to B2. My reason for using restic over rclone is so that if the local backup is corrupted I've got history on the remote to fall back to. I'm hoping to find a less cumbersome way to do this.

Rclone only uploads/overrides the remote if the meta-data (size/date/etc) shows a difference. Most disk corruption doesn't change these so it still works as a corruption backup.

I'm worried, in part, about files getting deleted. If I delete or otherwise lose my repository, rclone will helpfully delete it on the other side. Some amount of deletion is expected, like when borg prunes the old stuff out, so having rclone not delete anything might not be an option either.

I'm sure there are ways to manage this though, I just haven't figured them out yet.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#208

Post by ethbr0 »

ksec wrote: post #201
ethbr0 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about Apple's cloud strategy. "Cloud, but only for iUsers" seems... weird, from a scaling perspective? Granted, there are more Apple device customers than any other possible bucket, but is it enough to drive economies down to the point of competing on cloud pricing? And if not, then they're still stealing iDevice margin to price cloud competitively.

> but is it enough to drive economies down to the point of competing on cloud pricing? More than Enough. When you have 1 Billion iPhone customer who are also in the highest paying basket. The purchasing power is likely over 50% of the total market. As similarly shown in App Store market. The problem is Apple has always had an Asset Light strategy. Keeping many Datacenter of Storage running just isn't their thing. Tha…

Absolutely, Apple can charge $1.5 for something everyone else can charge $1 for, but I was looking it from a cost of goods sold perspective, instead of pricing power.

If it costs them $1.25, and everyone else can do it for $0.75 because they have scale and capital... that doesn't seem long-term stable.

If one cloud provider becomes dominant, Apple loses. If Apple loses market share, they lose negotiation power, and Apple loses.

The only way Apple wins is if cloud stays a multi-polar race AND Apple stays cloud-portable AND Apple retains significant market share AND cloud stays commoditized.

I'm not saying it's a bad bet (I'm sure Wall Street loves the resulting financials), but it does seem like a dangerous long term strategy, if cloud becomes more of product.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#209

Post by autarch »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #65
autarch wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I back things up to Backblaze B2 from Linux using borg. It works really well and it's incredibly cheap. I'm paying less than $1/month to keep about 155GB of data there. About half the data is from Borg backups, the other is rcloned copies of my music files.

What's your process for backing up to B2 using borg? I'm currently doing borg backups to a local server, then using restic to back up my borg backups to B2. My reason for using restic over rclone is so that if the local backup is corrupted I've got history on the remote to fall back to. I'm hoping to find a less cumbersome way to do this.

Ah, looking more close, I'm just using rclone to put the backups on B2. So first I do a backup to a local drive, then I run `borg with-local ... rclone sync ...`.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#210

Post by AnonHP »

cupofjoakim wrote: post #155

A friend in the music industry told me about a very cool backblaze moment. They were out touring with an artist in some remote country, I think it was Kazakhstan, when the artists macbook suffered hard drive failure. Everything was backed up on backblaze, but the internet connections they had available was simply too unreliable to get the backup down. They contacted backblaze and for a price that was high (but not in…

A counter fact: Backblaze is also the company that has scheduled maintenance every Thursday afternoon between 2 and 4 p.m. Pacific Time, when there may be disruptions to the services. [1]

[1]: https://www.backblaze.com/scheduled-maintenance.html

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