Notice something different on our website? It’s not just you. If you check out our homepage, the Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage page, or the Backblaze Computer Backup page, you’ll experience a different look and feel than you’re used to.

After 14 years, a lot has changed at Backblaze. We started out in 2007 as a consumer cloud backup company. Today, we’re a leader in the cloud storage industry with over an exabyte of data under management and we serve a wide variety of use cases for customers ranging from developers, to IT pros, to media-heavy businesses, and many more.

In all that time, we haven’t needed to change the brand. Like the services we provide, our brand was easy, trusted, and affordable.

And while those core principles haven’t changed, we realized that an update to our website and other communications tools could make the experience on our platforms clearer, more frictionless, and just plain blazier. With that in mind, we hunkered down to deliver a rebrand that would achieve all of this and more.

The Backblaze Rebrand

I won’t bore you with stories about the months of color wheels; name association and SWOT exercises; comparisons to other brands; and the blood, sweat, and tears our Creative and Front End Engineering teams poured into what went live today. All that and more contributed to this effort, but I do want to share some explanations relevant to you: What we changed, what we will change, and what we definitely won’t change.

What Did We Change?

Here are a few of the primary changes we’ve made as part of the rebranding process:

New(ish) Logo

The first thing many of you will notice is an updated logo. You can’t help but love our little flame that never stops burning—it’s a symbol of the blazing fast backup service we launched with, and today also serves as a representation of how we help our customers blaze forward with their businesses. For reference, here’s our old logo:

But you’ll notice below that our new logo features an update to the typeface and the color. We’ll talk about the updated color later, but the updated typeface is pretty straightforward. In its time, an all-caps name definitely worked, but today it feels a little “shouty”—we wanted a look and feel that says, we’re here to help you blaze on with whatever project comes next. We’re supportive and uncomplicated, if maybe a little irreverent. A side bonus is that we’d like the reporters of the world to know once and for all, there’s only one uppercase letter in our name… Here’s the new logo:

Changes to the User Experience

The overall user experience on the website has been updated to provide more ease for viewing on desktop or mobile. The navigation has been thoughtfully reorganized to make it easier to find the value each user needs within the site, especially within the robust footer we’ve added.

The design brings in more space (or padding) around and between content to allow for greater flow. And in many places, full-width sections have become islands to help you focus on key content, along with directional links to move you through the site.

Colors

If you head over to the Wayback Machine, or check the screenshots below, you’ll notice that our color palette is brighter, and, well, more “red” than before. Simply put, for the same reasons we doubled down on our blazing logo, we also doubled down on red. When you look around the cloud services space, it’s a sea of quiet blues. Feels a little cold.

We decided to own the heat: Whether you think of us as a catalyst, accelerant, or jet fuel, we’re here to help you blaze forward with whatever you’re trying to achieve—whether that’s a new app, business, or just backing up your precious data—we’ll keep you warm.

What We Will Change…

You don’t have to look farther than our familiar blog layout to see that this rebrand hasn’t touched the whole website, yet. We’re working through the remainder of our pages and assets over the rest of this year, but all of the changes to come will by and large just carry forward the new look and feel we’ve shared today.

…And What We Won’t Change

This rebrand covers a number of subtle and not-so-subtle changes, but an important thing to emphasize is that the substance of Backblaze won’t be changing. From day one, we’ve focused on being easy, affordable, and trusted for our customers. With the commitment to stick to those values in mind, the first thing we did in our rebrand was to reaffirm what exactly our foundation is, and I thought it would be good to share it with you today:

We hope this message comes through loud and clear in the new experience we’ve built for you.

Tell Us What You Think

As we work to continually serve our customers more effectively, we’ll keep improving the way you experience Backblaze products and services—hearing what works and what doesn’t from you is central to that improvement. So, let us know what you think if you have a chance. For a little incentive, we’re sending out some swag to the first 10 of you who respond to this post or share it on social media, so don’t be shy.

The post The Rebrand Reveal appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

On March 1, 2008, we shared a little post with you about a project we were working on. The blog warned you about data loss, and offered the chance to request a beta code for our new product. That was our first blog post, ever. According to Google Analytics, people weren’t too interested right off the bat. But a few days later they started tuning in, and our community began to form. Since our founding, we’ve reached a few fun milestones. I thought I’d take a moment to mark them here, especially given today’s date.

14 Years

That’s right, 14 years ago today we were officially recognized by the state of Delaware as a corporation. Shortly thereafter, the five co-founders were working together, cranking away in a one-bedroom Palo Alto apartment to get Backblaze off the ground.

It has been an incredible journey since then. Early on, we moved out of that apartment into our San Mateo office, celebrated reaching 10 petabytes of data under management, and launched Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.

We are so grateful to the customers who’ve entrusted us with their data over the past fourteen years. We are thankful to our team members for their dedication to Backblaze and our values. And we are very appreciative to all of the folks that have joined us here on the blog. We could not have made it this far without all 20 million of you.

Yes, we recently realized that we’ve had 20 million unique visitors to the blog since that first post back in 2008. You came for the Storage Pods, the Drive Stats, the drive farming, the stories about growing a business, and some of the other nearly 1,000 posts we’ve shared since launch.

Happily, our readership has expanded substantially over the years, with many of you commenting, sharing your own experiences, and trying out our products. It’s great that a lot of folks have found value in the content we share. It’s even cooler for those we’ve empowered to easily store and use data with our products.

There are a lot of milestones we’re proud of—passing an exabyte of data under management, restoring more than 50 billion files, or serving nearly 500,000 customers. We started Backblaze because we knew backing up was too difficult and expensive. Seeing all these growing numbers means the mission we started with all those years ago—to make storing and using data astonishingly easy—has caught on.

Celebrating 14 years by reaching 20 million readers means we get to geek out with 20 million people who care about data as much as we do! Thank you for joining us over the last 14 years, and we look forward to the journey ahead.

The post 14 Years and Counting appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

If you grew up using hard drives with spinning platters, you knew very well that it was just a matter of time before you started to develop a bad sector or, even worse, suffered a complete disk failure. You might have backed up things on floppy disks, Zip disks, or CD-ROMs, but that was laborious and hugely dependent on whether you had blank media available, let alone the will to overcome your procrastination and actually carry out the backup.

How I Met Backblaze

In 2011, when I first encountered Backblaze as a user, I was immediately drawn to it for its simplicity, as well as the fact that it provided me peace of mind in every respect with my files. It was pretty much a “set and forget” service, and I did not have to worry about my files getting corrupted or deleted again. For my personal usage, Backblaze became an indispensable tool for me—just like Dropbox, LastPass, and Evernote.

When I recently heard about the opportunity to lead marketing at Backblaze, I quickly discovered that the company had come a long way in 10 years. As I researched, I learned that they had developed a cloud storage service similar to Amazon S3, aptly named Backblaze B2. That made me want to learn more.

Here was a company—one of the preeminent players in the computer backup space—now ramping itself up to become a major player in cloud storage. Backblaze’s reputation of being easy to use as well as cost-effective made it clear to me that the company is very well positioned to succeed in the coming years. Furthermore, being built API-first from the ground up meant that developers would find it a pleasure to use. All these qualities combined made me want to dig deeper into working at Backblaze.

Joining the Team

I was thoroughly impressed with everyone I met during the interview process. They were transparent in sharing where the business is today, as well as where the company could be with the resources to reach farther. Even better, they were all very thoughtful and considerate of each other. There was a family vibe—they cared for one another’s success and well-being.

Even more important, they clearly care about their customers. Many companies talk about being customer-first, but when it comes to acting out those values, they fall short. This is not the case at Backblaze—the same level of caring and consideration they show one another extends to their customers.

Looking Forward

I joined Backblaze to help chart the course toward a future where data is the most valuable asset for businesses and individuals. I look forward to bringing my expertise in developer marketing, community building, immersive events, and education at scale to help the Backblaze Leadership team, our Marketing organization, and—most importantly—our customers succeed.

The post Welcome Nick Tran, VP of Marketing appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Did you know that computer scientist Lisa Gelobter assisted with the 1995 creation of Shockwave, essential technology that led to the development of web animation used to create GIFs? Many of us here at Backblaze didn’t know this until a few weeks ago, and the information expanded our sense of the pioneers in our field.

Backblaze focuses on cultivating an environment of openness and inclusion for our team, which sometimes means educating ourselves about histories and experiences we may not fully understand. Last month, our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee flagged the example above to underline the role that Black women have played in tech for Black History Month. This month, they’ve helped us focus on women’s history.

The committee asked women from the different departments at Backblaze to share their ideas, ranging from events they thought would be interesting to suggestions for educational resources. A sample of the ideas included:

• Create a mentorship program pairing women in the company with women in leadership positions.
• Learn about Ada Lovelace, the first programmer; Margaret Hamilton, the first software engineer; and the “Secret History of Women in Coding.”
• Read about the importance of considering gender differences for technology, like Jane Frankland’s book, “InSecurity: Why a Failure to Attract and Retain Women in Cybersecurity Is Making Us All Less Safe.”
• Host a team building event for the women in the company.

The DEI Committee put these ideas into practice and implemented them into their programming for the month. They hosted a “Women Empowering Women” panel where women throughout the organization could share their experiences. We’re sharing a few of the takeaways from this panel and the women leaders of Backblaze.

Challenges and Barriers for Women in Tech

To begin with, women on the panel shared some of their personal experiences with barriers they’ve faced throughout their careers. We’ve summarized some of their thoughts below.

Pay Inequality

A common issue that women discussed on the panel was unequal pay. Speakers brought up the fact that women in the United States earn 82 cents to every dollar earned by men. Transparency tends to be an issue when it comes to wage equality, with some of the speakers stating that even in other jobs where they had been urged not to accept lower pay than men, no one would share their salary information with them.

At Backblaze, pay analysis is a carefully considered aspect of the performance review process to ensure employees are paid fairly for their effort and level of responsibility. One suggestion that was shared during the panel was to encourage other people to conduct internal pay gap audits at their companies.

Gender Parity

Gender parity is also a broad issue across the tech industry and was a frequent point of discussion on the panel. Natalie, Senior Director of HR, mentioned that one way that Backblaze is committed to bridging the gap is by implementing a more structured internship program that will be open to entry-level candidates, where there is often more interest from women. The internship program has partnered with PowerToFly, a recruiting platform connecting women in tech. (Stay tuned for a future blog post about new initiatives related to Backblaze internship programs!)

She also highlighted the fact that the majority of people who left their jobs during the pandemic were women. She suggested that recruiters should be mindful of the gaps in people’s career experience, and that one way companies can help gender parity is by simply ignoring gaps in applicants’ resumes.

Prioritizing Both Work and Family

Many of the parents at Backblaze noted that taking time off to raise a family is often seen as a blemish on a person’s professional history, and some people in the meeting even pointed out that they were less likely to receive job offers when they were pregnant. At the same time, the mothers on the panel pointed out that making time for family can benefit a person’s career.

Jeannine, Principal Business Intelligence Analyst, shared that when she was raising her kids, she was also working, so she set up a system to divide her attention equally. At the time, she was the VP of engineering and internet operations at another company, and from 6-9 p.m., she did not answer emails unless there was an urgent issue. She trained her staff in being able to decide for themselves whether an issue needed urgent attention or could wait until the next day. That way, she got uninterrupted time with her family while helping her team learn problem-solving and management skills.

Representation Matters

One of the men who joined to hear the speakers at the panel shared that one of his influences for getting into systems administration was his mother, who started her own IT services company. Not only did he learn valuable skills from helping her with the business, but seeing her pursue her goals in tech encouraged him to pursue his own career in the industry.

Speak Up for Change

Tina, VP of Engineering, noticed that some of the women on her team didn’t speak up as often as some of their colleagues who were men. She emphasized that it’s important for leaders to make space for everyone to speak and share their thoughts. She ensures everyone feels comfortable to join discussions. She also noted that while it’s great for women to advocate for themselves, men need to take an equal part in fostering equality. Men can help by questioning their biases and considering their communication style to men versus women.

Create Space for Employees to Share Experiences

Another one of the men who joined the panel mentioned that although more people in the broader tech industry have begun to come forward with their experiences, it hit home differently to hear about these issues from women he knows directly. It shows that hosting an open conversation like this on any team is a valuable way for employees to build their support for one another and get to know each other better.

Celebrate Women’s History and Women in Tech

The discussion at this panel and similar events inspired an important conversation about the changing landscape of tech and a valuable space for employees to share their experiences, ideas, and advice.

Inspired? The Backblaze team brainstormed some other ideas for celebrating the women in your life, here:

• Write a thank you note to a woman colleague.
• Fundraise or donate to a charity supporting women.
• Have kids? Read or listen to “Rebel Girls.”
• Shop at women-owned businesses.
• Watch movies, read books, or listen to music created by women.

One more thing to note: We’re hiring! Take a look at our open roles and apply today.

The post Speaking Up and Taking Space: Celebrating Women’s History Month appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Writing a “year in review” for 2020 feels more than a little challenging. After all, it’s the first year in memory that became its own descriptor: The phrase “because 2020” 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.

And yet, looking forward to 2021, I can’t 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—the creativity and resilience shown in all they’ve 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’re no longer held back by a global pandemic?

Looking closer to home, at the Backblaze community—some 190 employees, as well as their families and pets, and our hundreds of thousands of customers and partners around the world—I’m similarly hopeful. In the grand scheme of the pandemic, we were lucky. Most of our work, our services, and our customers’ work, can be accomplished remotely. And yet, I can’t help but be inspired by the stories from this year.

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

And then there were Cédric 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 to make collaboration and storytelling easier across the African Fiction Channels at THEMA—a 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’s work, but I think everyone needed to escape through the power of media at some point this year.

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

These are just a sampling of the hopeful stories from our year. There’s no question that there are still challenges in our future, but tallying what we’ve 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’s 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.

The post 2020 in the Rearview appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Top 10 lists! You know them. You read them! You love them? As 2020 comes to an end and we look longingly at the new year ahead of us, I wanted to take a moment and look back at what you, our blog readers, have found amusing, entertaining, and informative over this past year.

To do that, we looked at our analytics and picked out the top 10 most-viewed stories that we published in 2020. The results may not shock you, but they may entertain you, especially if you missed any of these the first time around. Without further ado, let’s jump into the results!

Top 10 Backblaze Blog Posts From 2020

1. 2019 Hard Drive Stats. It’s not surprising to see a year-end hard drive stats post in the first position. Readers show up for these posts in a big way and this one took a look at the entirety of 2019 as a year-end wrap up.
2. The Complete Guide to Ransomware. With huge organizations like Foxconn, Kmart, many K-12 school districts, and hospitals being targeted by ransomware in recent years—and those attacks increasing—it’s no wonder that people are seeking to understand how to protect themselves.



3. Q1 2020 Hard Drive Stats and Q2 2020 Hard Drive Stats. The quarterly drive stats set the stage for our popular yearly reviews and provide a “heartbeat” of how our spinning disks are doing throughout the year.
4. A Beginner’s Guide to External Hard Drives. We took a look at some best practices for folks looking to increase their on-site storage capacity and how to make sure all that data is safe, as well. It would appear a lot of readers were onboarding new hard drives in 2020.
5. Synology Backup Guide. Other readers already have a series of external hard drives connected to their PC, meaning the natural progression is getting a NAS system like Synology in place and making sure that it, too, is backed up.
6. Q3 2020 Hard Drive Stats. Looking at how the stats are progressing, we find that even when some drive models have over 4,029 failures, their annualized failure rate can be below 3%—that’s scale!



7. Backing Up Google Drive. Far be it from us to claim that we saw the future, but when we published this post in June it was a touch ahead of its time. A few months later, Google announced the end of their unlimited storage plan and as people looked for alternatives, this resource on downloading and backing up Google Drive information became invaluable.
8. The Backblaze S3 Compatible API. One of our biggest Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage releases for 2020 was the Backblaze S3 Compatible API suite. This launch cleared the way for a ton of new partner integrations, use cases, and happy cloud storage customers.
9. Cloud Sync Is Not Backing Up. A common misconception is that someone is backed up if they only use iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this post, we dig into the differences between cloud backup and cloud sync, why they’re both useful, and how to leverage both for maximum efficiency.

The “Up-and-coming” Top Ten

Looking at the top 10 list for 2020, we see a lot of series and subjects that are popular every year. This got us thinking, what about the stories that broke new ground? Posts that aren’t hard drive stats and yet still drew an admirable number of readers? When we removed the big hitters we found an alternative top ten that will appeal to anyone looking for some more in-depth solutions, some nice news, and answers to a few evergreen questions!

1. What Is an Exabyte? What the heck is an exabyte anyway? We take a look at how much data that really is, and how it compares, on a cosmic level, to a gigabyte.
2. Object vs. File vs. Block—A Cloud Storage Guide. The word “cloud” can sometimes feel amorphous. For readers just starting to look cloudwards, this post aims to help put a finer point on clouds! We take a look at the different types of cloud storage and how to most effectively use each.
3. Duplicati + Backblaze. We love when B2 Cloud Storage gets integrated into popular apps, and Duplicati makes backing up data securely and easily from pretty much any system a piece of cake. No wonder it pairs so well with Backblaze B2!
4. Metadata: Your File’s Hidden DNA. Metadata surrounds pretty much every digital thing we do on a day to day basis, but a lot of people don’t fully understand what it is or how it works. This post defines metadata and looks at how it helps programs keep track of the information about files for both humans and computers.



5. Free Cloud Storage? What’s the Catch? There are a lot of “free” offers in the cloud storage marketplace positioned to help entrepreneurs get their application or website off the ground. In this post we go into some of the pitfalls that might come about when you take cloud storage providers up on an offer that might seem too good to be true.
6. Computer Backup Version 7.0.1. We took some time at the beginning of the year to make some adjustments to our cloud backup software, improving performance and enhancing our Inherit Backup State feature to help folks avoid reuploading data if they switch computers!
7. Exabyte Unlocked. In March, Backblaze crossed a data storage threshold that few other companies have achieved, storing over an exabyte of data for our customers, and we couldn’t be prouder.



8. How to Wipe a Mac Hard Drive. As people get new computers and sell off their old hardware, sometimes they want to make sure that all of their data has been deleted from their computer (just make sure you have a backup first).
9. Upgrading to an SSD. Once readers finish wiping their old drives, they often want something a bit more speedy. SSDs are dropping in price and getting more common, so this post gives you a few things to consider when upgrading.
10. RAM vs. Storage. This post takes a look at one of the most commonly asked questions when people talk about gigabytes—“Do they mean RAM, or do they mean storage size?”—and what’s the difference between the two anyway?

We love writing about the ins and outs of our industry, infrastructure, and the business in general, so it’s always fun to look back at what resonated with you over the past year. Was your favorite blog post not listed? Let us know in the comments below what resonated with you this year!

The post The 2020 Top Ten(s) appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

This year, a lot changed about the way we interact socially, and especially at work. To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, we moved the majority of our employees to working from home in early March. Since then, we realized that maintaining and continuing to build the team during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders would be essential, and it would take extraordinary additional effort and planning.

Our leadership, HR team, and our “Fun Committee” have all invested in trying to maintain team spirit and culture (Fun Committee is a group dedicated to planning exciting events for the team). They planned online events and virtual hangouts in place of the in-person social gatherings we would normally have, and they asked questions to get people talking to each other more often online. Some things worked to get people to interact and see each other more often, while other things failed to get any response.

Now, as some businesses look to return to their offices, social distancing will still have an impact on gathering together for team building events like an after-work happy hour or a chat in the lunchroom. But with the possibility of additional quarantines in the future, we’re looking to the opportunity of virtual spaces to lift our team spirit. And we’re sure we’re not the only business looking for ways to build our sense of community while socially distant. So, we want to share what has worked and what hasn’t for team building during this strange moment in our history.

Switching Out In-person Events for Video Calls

Early on, we realized that with shelter-in-place orders shutting down other businesses and ways for people to gather socially, working from home would mean that many people would probably struggle to feel connected to each other on a regular basis. That, and the fact that in the absence of a lunchroom or our office’s communal kitchens, employees no longer had a way to socialize with each other if they so desired. Nothing can replace the ability to connect with someone in person, but we decided to try using technology to our advantage while remaining socially distanced.

This took the form of regularly-scheduled video “hangouts” listed on our company-wide calendar. These meetings are scheduled on different days, at varying times, to accommodate teams’ differing schedules and to ensure that employees can take advantage of their most productive times of day without sacrificing their opportunity to socialize. Backblaze employees who were hired and onboarded after the shelter-in-place orders began can meet other people outside of their teams. Also, employees who have been remote pre-COVID have more opportunities for social interaction with their on-site peers.

Throughout hosting different video hangouts, we learned that it best worked for calls to represent a specific social interaction that would happen in the office.

Enjoying a “Brewtiful Morning” Online

Back in the office, many of us enjoyed chatting with each other while brewing our morning coffee. The coffee debates are fierce—Death Wish Coffee, Peet’s, Henry’s House of Coffee—all have loyalists. Now that the majority of the company works from home, our Office Administrator, Judith, hosts a “Brewtiful Mornings” coffee break on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings that lasts for about half an hour.

Attendance is usually small, which might seem as if the events aren’t popular. Actually, our team says that the small group of people on a call allows them to connect more directly in conversation. As anyone can join the calls, the group changes and people are able to connect with someone new each day.

We also learned that keeping an event going that might only serve a few employees at a time still has great benefits, as some employees prefer to only interact with a few people at a time. While the low attendance at the event might have felt like a failure to bring our team together at first, we realized that it’s an accommodating space for our employees with different communication styles.

Brian’s Office Hours

Backblaze Co-founder and CTO, Brian, hosts weekly office hours on Wednesday afternoons, as do several other members of the Engineering team. However, while other Engineering office hours may cover more technical topics, Brian’s office hours cover a range of topics from why dogs aren’t allowed in our data centers to his opinions on building a business with venture capital vs. bootstrapping and the cutest cat videos ever seen on the internet.

The format ranges from a group discussion to an informational presentation from Brian, but his openness, transparency, and willingness to answer almost any question has made his office hours both educational and entertaining for the employees that attend.

Maintaining Wellness

When quarantine began, Judith implemented virtual yoga and meditation sessions, led by a local instructor, twice a week. Unfortunately, after about a month into quarantine, these sessions were canceled because of low attendance.

The main reason these sessions did not get much participation was because shelter-in-place had just begun at the time and people were still adjusting to their new lifestyles. Between kids and work, it was difficult at first for employees to adjust time for self-care into their schedules. It was also hard to accommodate remote employees’ schedules since they live in different timezones.

Because of this experience, we learned to give our employees some time to adjust to their new schedules before initiating classes or social events. It’s also important to check in with employees to learn more about how their self-care priorities might change over time and create events that they’d like to attend. Finally, we recommend having these classes at different times throughout the week in order to accommodate different schedules.

Keeping the Conversation Going on Slack

Another way we’ve looked to boost team spirit while away from the office is by facilitating ongoing conversations through different Slack channels. We have several Slack channels catering to different interests (cooking, gaming, exercising, you name it!) to help maintain team morale during shelter-in-place. Most channels were created by Judith, but any employee can create one if they’d like. Slack channels work great because people can participate when they have the extra time to do so without having to plan their entire day around an event.

At the start of working from home, employees were quick to share tips about home office setups and their reactions to the shift in their daily routines. Then as time went on, less people seemed to ask questions or spontaneously message the different social channels. Judith’s method of re-engaging everyone in conversation was to act as the main facilitator. She’s always posting something, whether it’s about the news or a reaction to what someone else posted. By being engaged, she encourages others to also get involved.

She also recommends knowing your audience—if your employees love to talk about current events, then it may be worth taking the time out of your mornings to read the news so that you can initiate interesting conversations.

Taking Advantage of Online Opportunities and Flexible Schedules

Since the start of shelter-in-place, our team created a bunch of new Slack channels to stay virtually connected. Although we can no longer casually run into coworkers at the water cooler and chat with them, we’ve shifted those conversations to a channel called #virtualwatercooler.

People don’t see each other throughout the day anymore so they don’t always know what’s new in their coworkers’ daily lives. That’s why Judith initiated a few ongoing trends to make it easier for people to update each other about their day. One of the fun versions of these updates is when employees share pictures of their “co-workers”—this can be their pet, their roommates, or their kids. While many of us wish for a pre-pandemic world, it’s provided us the opportunity to get to know our colleagues in different ways without being intrusive.

In a similar channel called #wfh-help, employees can talk directly about the changes that remote work has brought to their daily routine. They use this channel to share helpful resources like productivity tools and tips on working from home with kids. Everyone’s experience of working from home looks a bit different, but here they can ask advice for advice or connect with someone else who’s experiencing a similar situation.

Adjusting to a Virtual Community

Throughout shelter-in-place, some existing Slack channels had to modify their purpose because they were used to plan in-person team events (like game nights). Instead of going completely silent, employees found ways to invite new members and turn to online spaces for new possibilities.

Prior to shelter-in-place orders, a channel was used to schedule “Terraforming Mars” sessions after work. Nowadays, members can no longer play board games together in person like they used to, but that doesn’t stop them from playing together online.

Now, some employees play “Terraforming Mars” virtually on their computers after work. Others play “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” and a few play “Stellaris.” One of our team members is an avid Twitch streamer, so group members use the Slack channel to notify when their co-worker is going live. Many employees from the channel join in on the fun and hang out virtually.

Dan, Senior Support Technician and a passionate gamer, recommends incorporating a diverse range of games into the mix. Our group at Backblaze plays easier short games like “Fluxx” to longer, more competitive games like “Terraforming Mars.” This helps gamers at all levels feel included.

Special Events

Something we noticed that we’re sure many other organizations are also experiencing is that engagement through ongoing Slack channel conversations and regular video hangouts seems to drop over time. One explanation for this decrease in participation might be an overall sense of fatigue that comes with not being able to interact with people in person for an extended amount of time. While we can’t organize in-person events, we can try new things with our virtual hangouts to get people interested, again.

In addition to our regularly-scheduled digital “programming,” we have also hosted several one-off events, generated by staff ideas and usually hosted by Judith or our Events Marketing Coordinator, Caitlin. These events have featured special guests, or sometimes, our very own team members have shown off their talents. From singing and playing piano to hosting a baking master class, these events have been a great, low pressure way for team members to share the things they’re passionate about. These events also help to provide additional opportunities for employees to engage, and often also have welcomed family members, especially children!

Princess Storytime with Elsa

Thanks to Wish Upon a Star Princess Parties, we were able to invite Queen Elsa of Arendelle to host two special story time sessions with many of our employees’ families, telling the stories of “Frozen” and “Frozen 2.” Each session was about 30 minutes long and included story time, sing-alongs, and time for questions and answers with Elsa.

If you plan to do something like this for your employees, we strongly recommend encouraging parents to join with their kids to help facilitate muting/unmuting to ensure everyone gets a chance to hear and be heard. We heard from many parents after our first story time with Elsa that their kids loved the event, so we took character requests and are working on bringing in “Star Wars” characters, superheroes, and other Disney favorites for future story time sessions!

Sanctuary Tour

One week, a mysterious happy hour event appeared on the company calendar, promising a special “surprise guest.” Those who joined the meeting that day learned that the special guest was none other than Paco the llama, one of the animal ambassadors at Sweet Farm Sanctuary!

Sweet Farm is a local nonprofit that promotes sustainable farming and factory-farm animal rescue. After meeting Paco, we were taken on a virtual tour to meet other animals including cows, pigs, and sheep, and learned more about the farm’s operations and mission.

Several employees shared that they had previously visited Sweet Farm (One had attended a painting class at the farm and had painted a still-life of Paco the llama!), and others expressed interest in visiting once they were able to safely do so, again. Many farms and animal rescues are offering similar opportunities to have an animal “join” your company meeting; if you are interested in doing something like this, we encourage you to choose a local organization, if possible.

Virtual Events Bring Our Teams Together During Shelter-in-place

Our virtual events and Slack channels have helped us tremendously in maintaining our culture during shelter-in-place. Working from home can be difficult, but as team members, we are there to support one another whether that’s through a quick coffee chat in the morning, a story time with Elsa to keep the kids busy, or fitness challenges to maintain a healthy lifestyle. We’d love to hear more about some of the things your organization has done to build team spirit during shelter-in-place. Share some of the ways your team stays connected while working from home in the comments below.

The post Building Team Spirit While Working Remotely appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Over the past few months, the world has been grappling with a pandemic which has unfortunately led to layoffs by some organizations and has resulted in others finding alternate ways to augment their team distribution, hiring, and onboarding. Both situations are challenging, logistically and emotionally.

At Backblaze, we feel incredibly fortunate that we’ve been able to continue employing our full staff and add some talented new employees to our roster. Thankfully, we’ve remotely onboarded employees in the past, which gives us a solid foundation to build out a process that can support a fully-distributed model.

We expect that there are a lot of companies out there who have never dealt with remote employees or onboarding before, but now have no other choice. With that in mind, we wanted to take a moment to share our experience with virtual onboarding processes to help those of you who now need to pivot in that direction.

Virtual Onboarding

Our Human Resources Generalist, Vanna Ngo, manages the onboarding processes at Backblaze and is a great resource to managers who may need ideas or advice. When someone accepts an offer to work with us, Vanna sends them a welcome email along with a “Getting to Know You” form that asks our new co-workers for some interesting facts. These range from their favorite foods and “Star”-related entertainment (like Wars, or Trek?), to their T-shirt size (so that we can give them swag when they come to the office, or ship it to them), and their favorite pastimes. Our Office Administrator, Judith Pimentel, uses this questionnaire to develop a personalized welcoming package of merchandise and goodies to help the new hire feel like a part of the team from day one.

Managers are informed of all required training and they build weekly plans for the new hire accordingly. The manager also determines an onboarding buddy, who is a resource for the new hire throughout the onboarding process and beyond. The buddy is chosen based on their role and their interest. They’re there for the new hire whether they have questions, need help with a project, or simply just want to have a casual conversation.

During the employee’s first weeks, managers are especially mindful of creating early social ties between new hires and a broad array of the Backblaze team. Normally, new hires have coffee with a few staffers from other teams. During our time working remotely, however, managers have vastly expanded this program by setting up a large number of virtual meet-and-greets. In addition, Vanna does 1:1 Slack calls with herself and the new hire for a few minutes during the first week or so of the new employee’s onboarding, simply to ensure they’re doing okay.

Tips and Tricks

Here’s some advice that we have compiled during our remote onboarding journey. We hope that your HR and IT departments will be able to carry them into your company’s onboarding processes.

• 1. Welcome and introduce the new hire in an email and/or Slack channel. At Backblaze, when we have a new hire, the hiring manager emails the entire company and welcomes the new employee by describing who they are and how they will use their professional background to help at Backblaze. We also have Slack channels like #social and #virtualwatercooler where employees send welcome messages. These initiatives can help new hires feel more included.
• 2. Turn on your video when doing an onboarding call. This is a best practice for any remote meeting, but especially true when onboarding a new hire. You want to reassure them that they still have co-workers even if they may not be sitting right next to them.
• 3. If you are using Google Hangouts, take advantage of the presentation feature. This tool allows you to share your screen with the new hire, which can make training sessions a bit easier.
• 4. Develop booklets to go along with virtual training sessions. At Backblaze, we created booklets and pre-recorded videos for our expense report training with accounting, security training with IT, and time card training with payroll. New hires can reference these booklets later, in the absence of being able to incidentally ask other staffers for help.
• 5. Install necessary applications on the new hire’s computer before handing it off. Our IT department does this either by using system images or manually installing relevant software and configuration files. They also set up the new hire’s accounts with temporary passwords, so the employee can change their password later. This ensures that IT never knows the individual’s password.
• 6. Implement and teach new hires about best security practices. Every computer that is given to our new hires uses Full Disk Encryption. Our IT team helps the new employee set up an account with a password manager so that they only have to remember one strong password rather than multiple vulnerable passwords. IT also teaches the new hire best security practices and they cover topics such as creating secure passwords, using a VPN, and keeping private information out of view during a video call.

Delivering Equipment

One initial roadblock to virtual onboarding during the COVID-19 epidemic was getting equipment shipped to new hires. Laptops were out of stock from our normal supplier, but our IT department worked quickly to procure a stock from elsewhere. If you have a certain hiring target, you may want to consider buying some amount of buffer stock even before new hires come on board. We likely haven’t seen the end of supply-chain disruptions for laptop manufacturing, which means out-of-stock situations could be a problem again.

Simran Kaur, our recently hired product manager—who began her role here after Backblaze had shifted to a primarily work-from-home status during the COVID crisis—explained, “I got my laptop, keyboard, and an extra monitor a day or two before my start date. I had everything I needed before I even started working.” Our IT department planfully pulled together instructions so that new hires could easily assemble their work stations on arrival.

Simran’s experience of receiving everything she needed in a timely way is our ideal. But because we expect supplies of different work-from-home essentials to be constrained, Vanna has started asking new hires regarding what equipment they already have on hand. With this approach, we’re able to not only control our supply, but also accommodate limited spacing in employee’s homes. Some new hires already have a workstation at home, so sending them more equipment will only take up their space.

When onboarding employees remotely, it’s crucial that they have the backup tools they need. We set up each employee with a Backblaze Business Backup account on their laptop so that they can access their files from any location. The Business Backup product also allows for both IT-side and physical restores as well as groups-level file sharing. If you are interested in learning more about the advantages of implementing Backblaze Business Backup into your remote workflow, please read our blog post here.

Encouraging Productivity

Once an employee is effectively onboarded and their workstation is ready for daily use, the most important aspect of their orientation begins: ensuring that they’re able to be productive. To help with this, hiring managers create schedules for their new hires prior to their start date. This way, new hires know exactly what they need to do and when they need to do it each day.

Backblaze’s benefits package also includes an equipment stipend which employees can use on anything that would improve their productivity, whether in the office (eventually), or now at home. This includes home office furniture, an extra monitor, or any other tools that may help productivity.

Backblaze offers this perk because we understand that each employee has unique needs for doing their best work: for some it’s noise cancelling headphones, for others it’s a smartwatch to keep them active during the day. We strongly recommend providing your employees with some flexibility in customizing their workspace—especially as they work to make a place (their home) into something it likely wasn’t intended to be (their office).

Advice From One New Hire to Another

On the flip side, there are some things that new hires themselves can do to improve their remote onboarding experience. Shannon Gerard, our new director of Marketing Operations, has worked remotely for the past five years. Her first piece of advice for new hires is to upgrade your internet connection. In an effort to assist with internet costs and upgrades, Backblaze has given employees (who were not remote prior to the shelter-in-place) a monthly stipend/allowance to cover that cost. Shannon said, “When it comes to your internet connection, you need to have a backup plan of some sort, whether that’s connecting to your mobile hotspot or just dialing into the call using your phone. You also need to be prepared to execute your plan quickly because there’s nothing worse than getting kicked off a meeting and taking a while to get back in.”

She also recommends scheduling brief meet-and-greets with people who you may not be formally meeting as part of your onboarding. “It doesn’t have to be anything super formal,” she explained. “Just a quick introduction so that you can actually meet the person before you start working with them.”

Virtual Socializing

Whether or not someone is a new hire, working remotely can take a toll on their social life. It can also be difficult to share the company culture with the new hire. To solve this challenge, Judith created various virtual social events throughout the week.

We suggest you create similar events that can help your employees socialize with their work friends and help new hires get a sense of the company culture. We have listed a few of the events that Judith initiated below. Feel free to use them as inspiration for your own virtual social events!

• We start off every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with “Brewtiful Mornings,” where employees gather on Google Hangouts to socialize over a cup of coffee or tea. During these 15-minute sessions (but they always go long), employees talk about everything from their coffee mugs to current events.
• On Monday afternoon, we have an all-hands meeting where managers introduce their new hires to the rest of the company. We also have virtual yoga and meditation on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, where employees can bond with their co-workers while resting their mind for a few moments. On Wednesday afternoon, employees enjoy a virtual lunch break together.
• To end the week, we have a virtual happy hour on Friday evening. This is another chance for new hires to introduce themselves and to get to know their peers. Simran said that though these social events were virtual, she was still able to learn everything she needed to know about the Backblaze culture by participating.

New Practices for On-site Onboarding

Remote onboarding may be a challenge, but there are some aspects of it that you can transfer to your onsite onboarding processes. We highly recommend you keep video training materials and have new hires watch them as part of their onboarding process even when everyone is back in the office. Training videos are more time efficient because the IT department will no longer have to conduct a training for every new hire.

Another practice that can be carried into onsite onboarding processes is virtual meet-and-greets. This is especially useful if you have employees who work remotely full-time even when there is not a pandemic happening. Traditionally, new hires only meet those who work onsite and they don’t get a chance to meet remote employees or get much face time with them. Virtual meet-and-greets can help your new employees connect with your full-time remote staff. They can also help remote staff feel like they are still in the loop even if they may not be physically in the office.

We’re Still Hiring!

The pandemic is not something we can control, but what we can adjust is how we respond to it. By being proactive and thinking outside of the box, we were able to pivot to a fully remote onboarding experience for our new hires. We hope some of the tips above are helpful for other organizations in the same boat.

If you are currently seeking a new role, we are hiring at Backblaze. All of our interviews are being done virtually for the time being, but we are still committed to hiring and expanding our team. If you are interested in working with us, please feel free to apply through our Career Center or send your resume to jobscontact@backblaze.com! We look forward to hearing from you.

The post How to Virtually Onboard New Hires appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

At the beginning of any given quarter, conference rooms fill with managers extolling the virtues of the key objectives and tactics for the next 90 days. I’ve always been amused by the little voice inside my head as I stand up in front of my team for these talks—in the best of times, it’s saying “C’mon… The probability that this goes exactly as planned is something like 2%.” But, you shrug it off because a good plan is one that creates a clear end point, proposes a viable way to get there, and has the agility to adapt when you come into contact with reality. 89 days later, you look back, chuckle a little at the twists and turns…and, hopefully, celebrate a mission accomplished.

That’s in the best of times. Today is nowhere near that. Today, it’s hard enough to know where the world will be in 90 days’ time, let alone where our business goals and initiatives will end up. To quote our CEO, Gleb, who was borrowing an idea from “Frozen 2,” the best thing is to focus on doing “the next right thing.”

So what, exactly, is that? Well, for Backblaze, it’s to remember that we’re Backblaze. Besides being the right thing, an advantage to being a transparent company is that it’s an easy thing to do even in uncertain times. Quite literally, it made a lot of sense to write a post that looks at the marketing and communications challenges for our business during a pandemic. Our hope is that in sharing what is happening behind the scenes, we might help those that are facing similar challenges.

Writing this post, I am very aware that some of our readers might be furloughed, laid off, or have their businesses entirely gone. I, and our team, hope that each day gets a little brighter and you get back to stable, soon. At the least, we hope you find something interesting or thought provoking here. At the most, we hope you’ll find inspiration to tackle whatever the next right thing is for you.

What Do We Know Right Now?

Fundamental demand is unaffected: The earliest data points we have for Backblaze’s business are that the top of funnel demand (web visits, account creates) have yet to be materially affected by the crisis. In March, those growth metrics hit the forecasts we created at the end of 2019.

These results are a bit head-scratching given the sheer dominance of pandemic news everywhere. Intuitively, one would assume data and cloud storage content wouldn’t be as interesting to people. And yet looking at the data, for now at least, the market for cloud storage is unchanged (more on that later).

Decision making by customers is affected: We can use our sales team’s pipeline to look a little deeper into customer behavior. What we’re seeing is that customers we were working on longer term projects with have largely paused or changed their decision-making approach.

Let’s say you’ve been planning some cool enhancement to your infrastructure since the beginning of the year and were just about to start executing. Well, migrating the archives off of those LTO tapes isn’t today’s problem (setting aside the fact that you may not even be allowed in your office to do that actual work). So those types of projects are delayed. “Change” or “enhance” takes a back seat to “stabilize.”

This does mean that new projects are springing up very quickly—all of a sudden you have a fully distributed workforce. Are your team members’ computers being backed up? How are they accessing mission critical data? While final decisions on existing projects have been delayed, new needs are being identified with accelerated timelines.

This is where a marketer’s post to other marketers feels particularly awkward. But Backblaze is a business: we have customers that rely on the services we provide, families that rely on the salaries we pay, and a broader community that enjoys our occasional gifs. In other words, we still have a responsibility to ensure the future success of the business. In a world where very little non-COVID related news seems to be relevant, what should our messaging look like?

What Can We Do?

There are three fundamental paths we could take with our outward messaging:

• 1. 1. We could go dark. Trying to run a for-profit enterprise is odd during a pandemic. That said, infrastructure as a service is an increasingly relevant thing to

  help

  with the problems our customers are dealing with.
• 2. We could just blissfully execute against our pre-existing plans. Our business model is fortunate to be resilient against these types of events. But ignoring the elephant in the room is odd at best and, at worst, offensively tone deaf.
• 1. 3. We could attempt to be in conversation with the moment. Backblaze prides itself on being a transparent company. When other disasters have hit—

  like the 2011 flooding in Thailand

  —we’ve had a unique perspective to share. Just like every company, we’re bordering on obsessive consumption of the news on the pandemic. Unlike a lot of companies, we have statisticians capable of running their own models. However, customers come to us for perspectives on data storage topics, not public health—what unique, value added perspective, if any, can we offer?

Option one feels irresponsible. Option two is troubling on a number of levels. Option three is why this post was written (and will be followed up with similar posts covering the challenges faced by our Supply Chain and People Operations teams).

Tactically, we feel that option three means that we adjust our plans, speak to the moment in whatever manner we’re uniquely able to, monitor the market for when storage news becomes interesting again, and try to remain a good corporate citizen along the way.

How We’ve Resolved to Do It:

Backblaze made the decision to move the majority of our workforce to work from home on March 6^th (prior to California’s “shelter-in-place” orders). Over that weekend, as our business continuity plans kicked in, a number of proposals were floated. Two broad themes emerged in those discussions:

Should we notify our customers? Sending an email out felt like the right thing to do. But what were we notifying people of? Our operations and services weren’t changing from a customer perspective. We generally don’t send out emails that say, “Here’s 500 words on something that will not affect your experience with Backblaze.” Again, our approach was to speak when and where we could add value to our customers’ lives. An immediate note didn’t pass the sniff test.

Do we adjust our marketing plans? In the most literal sense, we wanted to tone down some celebratory messaging we knew was coming. We cleared an exabyte of customer data under management, but it felt prudent to cancel the party (particularly with guests coming in from around the globe). We had a 5,300 word profile in Inc. magazine (it’s a fun read)…but promoting that in the middle of everything else felt odd. But in the end, if we’re working on products and releases that we think will help our customers, we should still get them out to market.

As we worked through those big picture questions, we arrived at guiding principles for ourselves:

• We’re Still Running the Business: Our customers rely on us for their data storage. Every day, more people are looking for solutions and tools that can help them face their new reality. If we have a solution to a customer problem, let’s make sure the customer knows about it.
• Plan for an Eventual Recovery: Most would agree that we are already in a recession. And things are likely to get worse before they get better. That fact can make it hard to plan for the future. So this principle underlines two important realities: admit that there’s a disruption today; believe that things will eventually get better. We can’t know when things will get better. But, by assuming they will, we’ll do our part to create that sunnier tomorrow.
  • This does mean that we should keep releasing our feature/functionality development. While our launches might be somewhat muted, if we have something that will help customers solve problems, let’s try to get it in their hands. (To that end, stay tuned for something big next month!)
• We Don’t Traffic in Fear, Uncertainty, or Doubt (FUD): There’s plenty of FUD to go around right now, and a lot of companies will try and take advantage of it. That’s never been our style, and we’re not going to start now. We will never be predatory, either in action or perception.
• Our Reality Isn’t Everyone’s Reality: Our business might be doing well, and much of our staff might be working from home, but that’s not the case for everyone. Our team may be relatively healthy, but many people and their families are fighting a deadly virus. Our communications need to include a statement or a sentiment that communicates, “This is a strange time. We’re staying safe and productive, and are trying to provide you tools/interesting stories.” Also, we need to review our automated messaging. As a backup company, the word “disaster” is often used in the context of “disaster recovery.” Those sentences could read poorly in today’s environment.
• We’re Still Backblaze: We’re known for providing unique insights and information on our blog that is gleaned from how we operate. We should continue to find ways to share knowledge that might help (or uniquely interest others) from our blog perspective.
  • As part of this, remember that we’re a data storage company, not a health organization. There are many companies—like retailers, restaurants, medical providers—that need to communicate their relative status to the community and customers. Our customers trust that we are doing what’s right to keep their data safe and accessible. Always filter for “why does Backblaze have a value-add perspective?”

When Is the Beginning of Whatever Is Next?

As a business, it’s always important to stay in tune with how our markets and public are feeling. So how do we understand where society stands? With some hope and a lot of science, eventually, we think there will be a vaccine. But what are the steps before then? Will evidence that we’ve flattened the curve bring confidence that we’ve done the right thing and bring people back to more mundane topics?

At some point, we believe that there will be some leading indications that the recovery is starting from a psychological perspective. In that sense, we think that will be when customers will feel “stabilized” and begin thinking again about “changes” and “enhancements.” Here are three things we are monitoring.

• The curve gets flattened in major markets. We can measure the reduction in rates of infection and mortality in California and New York. Two large media markets, but in terms of coverage and where the majority of media lives. Also, two of the initial “hotspots” for COVID in the US. As those two states progress, we believe that the media environment will start covering other news (and that there will be increasing numbers of people receptive to non-COVID information). The sad realities of overlooking mid and small markets are not lost on us. This is just our perception of how public sentiment will go.
• Ability to care for those that are sick—as measured by having enough hospital beds for those that need it. As a society, we are facing many challenges in managing this outbreak. But, just like in wartime, the resilience and abilities of humans should never be underestimated. Factories are converting to produce more sanitizer, masks, and ventilators. The Army Corps of Engineers are converting spaces (auditoriums, arenas, etc.) into hospitals. We can track the projected number of beds needed and the capacity in given locales. When supply meets demand, it will be a good thing.
• Consumers are consuming more non-COVID stories—as measured in week over week podcast listening. The good people at Podtrac are providing statistics on podcast consumption during this time. It’s hard to imagine total consumption returning until people start commuting again, but it should begin to rise as consumer sentiment starts having interest in non-pandemic news.

When I became part of the Backblaze family four years ago, we were a third of the size we are today. The growth and expansion of the business is incredibly energizing, but does bring increased costs around keeping the team on the same page. Writing this post started as an internal memo to help organize our team. We thought it was potentially interesting enough to merit sharing with you. In keeping with our principles, we’ll continue to share our thinking as it evolves and whatever insights we believe might be helpful. We hope you and your family stay as safe and healthy as possible. As always, we’re happy to engage with you in the comments below.

The post Business as (Un)Usual appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.