−Removed: We are a leading storage cloud platform, providing businesses and consumers cloud services to store, use, and protect their data in an easy and affordable manner.
+Added: We are a leading specialized storage cloud platform, providing businesses and consumers cloud services to store, use, and protect their data in an easy and affordable manner.
We provide these cloud services through a purpose-built, web-scale software infrastructure built on commodity hardware.
−Removed: From genome sequencing to mapping the world, from saving lives to playing online games, from interacting with a business to running one, data is central to modern existence.
−Removed: By substantially reducing the complexity and frustration of storing, using, and protecting data, we help empower customers to focus on their core business operations.
+Added: We believe that by substantially reducing the complexity and frustration of storing, using, and protecting data, we can empower customers to focus on their core business operations.
Through our blog and culture of transparency, we have built a community of millions of readers and brand advocates.
−Removed: Referrals from our community of brand advocates, combined with our efficient and primarily self-serve customer acquisition model and an ecosystem of thousands of partners, have allowed us to attract approximately 500,000 customers as of December 31, 2021.
−Removed: These customers use the Backblaze Storage Cloud platform across more than 175 countries to grow and protect their business data on our approximately 2 exabytes, or 2 trillion megabytes, of data storage under management.
−Removed: As businesses and consumers shift to the cloud, our goal is that our cloud services will increasingly become a foundational element of their overall technology stack.
+Added: Referrals from our community of brand advocates, com bined with our highly efficient and primarily self-serve customer acquisition model and an ecosystem of thousands of partners, have allowed us to attract more than 500,000 customers as of December 31, 2022 .
+Added: These customers use our Storage Cloud platform across more than 175 countries to grow and protect their business data on our over 2.5 exabytes, or 2.5 trillion megabytes, of data storage under management.
At its founding, Backblaze set out to simplify the process of storing, using, and protecting data.
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From our straightforward pricing model, to our transparent communication with customers, to the popular and insightful content on our blog—we believe we have established ourselves as an open and trusted provider and partner.
−Removed: The Backblaze Storage Cloud organizes, safeguards, and keeps over 500 billion files available on demand and is designed to handle much more in the future.
+Added: The Backblaze Storage Cloud organizes, safeguards, and keeps ov er 500 billion files available on demand and is designed to handle much more in the future.
Through our purpose-built software that manages our global physical infrastructure, we provide a platform that we believe is durable, scalable, performant, and secure.
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Enables customers to store data, developers to build applications, and partners to expand their use cases.
−Removed: The amount of data stored in this cloud service can scale up and down as needed on a pay-as-you-go basis.
−Removed: This service is offered as consumption-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and serves use cases including backups, multi-cloud, application development, and ransomware protection.
+Added: The amount of data stored in this cloud service can scale up and down as needed on a pay-as-you-go basis, or can be paid for on a capacity basis for greater predictability, which we refer to as our B2 Reserve offering.
+Added: This Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) enables use cases including backups, multi-cloud, application storage, and ransomware protection.
• Backblaze Computer Backup:
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We have fostered community engagement with content we share on our blog—in 2022 alone, millions of readers consumed content that we shared there.
−Removed: Our free trial and self-serve sign-up processes help convert our blog readers and referrals from our brand advocates into customers, with over 80% of our revenue in 2021 coming from self-serve customers.
−Removed: Our developer, alliance, and managed service provider (MSP) partners help expand use cases and attract customers, thereby increasing usage of our Storage Cloud.
+Added: Our free trial and self-serve sign-up processes help convert our blog readers and referrals from our brand advocates into customers, with approximately 80% of our total revenue in 2022 coming from self-serve customers.
+Added: Our technology, channel, affiliate, and managed service provider (MSP) partners help expand use cases and sales channels and attract customers, thereby increasing usage of our Storage Cloud.
In addition to our self-serve selling motion, we have a sales-assisted selling motion to identify opportunities to increase business with existing customers and to assist larger customers in adopting our services.
−Removed: Our sales-assisted selling
−Removed: motion customers are frequently significantly larger in terms of average revenue per customer than our self-serve customers.
+Added: Our sales-assisted selling motion customers are frequently significantly larger in terms of average revenue per customer than our self-serve customers.
Substantially all of our revenue is recurring in nature.
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Our land-and-expand strategy is evidenced by our overall net revenue retention rate of 113% and 111% as of December 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively.
+Added: information about net revenue retention rate and how it is calculated, please see the section titled “Key Business Metrics” in Item 7, Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Result of Operations included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Our B2 Cloud Storage revenue grew by 46% during the year ended December 31, 2022 and our Computer Backup cloud service revenue grew by 17% during the year ended December 31, 2022.
−Removed: By expanding our offerings, we are able to further expand our revenue and market opportunity.
−Removed: Our operations have historically been efficient with limited outside investment.
−Removed: Our ecosystem of partners—including developer partners, alliance partners, and MSPs—helps us expand our platform in existing and new markets.
+Added: Our ecosystem of partners—including technology and developer partners, channel partners, and MSPs—helps us expand our platform in existing and new markets.
Our partners leverage our cloud services to provide storage solutions to their customers or our mutual customers and in turn, we are able to expand our use cases and overall reach.
−Removed: • Developer partners.
−Removed: Our platform, alongside the platforms of our developer partners, enables software developers to efficiently build their applications.
−Removed: • Alliance partners .
−Removed: Our platform provides a cloud storage destination for partners whose products require storage to serve their customers.
+Added: • Technology and Developer Partners.
+Added: Our platform, alongside the platforms of our technology and developer partners, enables software developers to efficiently build their applications and provides a cloud storage destination for partners whose products require storage to serve their customers.
Partners providing software, hardware, and SaaS services to perform backups, synchronize data, manage media, and address other use cases either select our Storage Cloud for the underlying data storage, or offer it as a choice to their customers.
+Added: • Channel Partners.
+Added: We sell B2 Cloud Storage to resellers at a discounted rate.
+Added: Resellers then market and sell B2 Cloud Storage individually or as part of broader solutions to businesses and organizations.
+Added: The channel provides greater access to markets with specialty needs in the purchasing process, like state and local governments and educational institutions.
• Managed Service Providers (MSP).
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Additionally, according to IDC, the worldwide market for DPaaS is expected to grow to $18.4 billion by 2025.
−Removed: While the Backblaze Storage Cloud can scale to any size organization, we believe our efficient go-to-market and focus on ease of use are particularly suited to selling to and serving the needs of mid-market businesses (defined as businesses and organizations with 10 to 999 employees).
+Added: We believe our efficient go-to-market and focus on ease of use are particularly suited to selling to and serving the needs of mid-market businesses (defined as businesses and organizations with 10 to 999 employees).
According to our analysis of IDC data, mid-market businesses are expected to represent approximately 60% of worldwide IaaS spending throughout the forecast period (2021 to 2025).
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The Backblaze Storage Cloud provides the core platform for our cloud services and is designed to be durable, available, scalable, secure, performant and predictive.
−Removed: This storage cloud organizes, safeguards, and keeps over 500 billion files available on demand and is designed to handle many more in the future.
−Removed: The key enabler of the Backblaze Storage Cloud is the software that runs it, which contains millions of lines of code and that our software engineering team has written and continually improved since our Company’s founding.
+Added: This storage cloud organizes, safeguards, and keeps ov er 500 billion files available on demand and is designed to handle many more in the future.
+Added: The key enabler of the Backblaze Storage Cloud is the software that runs it, which contains millions of lines of code that our software engineering team has written and continually improved since our Company’s founding.
The ability to manage an ever-larger amount of data across ever-larger hard drives while maintaining data availability and durability continues to be highly complex.
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Our code achieves this for billions of files under management by intelligently allocating storage locations in line with capacity and demand.
−Removed: Alongside these core
−Removed: processes, the software layer also manages load balancing, caching, data compression, deletion, billing, as well as numerous other essential functions for hundreds of thousands of customers.
+Added: Alongside these core processes, the software layer also manages load balancing, caching, data compression, deletion, billing, as well as numerous other essential functions for hundreds of thousands of customers.
Generally weekly code updates regularly enhance these functions.
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Our software splits each uploaded customer file into several data parts, adds multiple redundant parts, and stores these parts across discrete hard drives in different servers in a data center.
−Removed: As a result, even if a few of the parts are entirely lost or offline, we are able to reconstruct the customer data from the remaining parts for durability.
+Added: As a result, even if a few of the parts are entirely lost or
+Added: offline, we are able to reconstruct the customer data from the remaining parts for durability.
Multiple vaults are grouped together to form one cluster, and one or more clusters are organized into a region.
−Removed: Our globally distributed storage platform also offers customers multi-region geographic choice for their data—currently between the United States and Europe—providing flexibility for different needs including geopolitical considerations, regulatory requirements, and performance optimization.
+Added: Our globally distributed storage platform also offers customers multi-region geographic choice for their data—currently between East and West Coast regions in the United States and Europe—providing flexibility for different needs including geopolitical considerations, regulatory requirements, and performance optimization.
This software manages our global physical infrastructure of more than 250,000 hard drives and one terabit per second (one million megabits per second) of network capacity across multiple data centers.
Our systems also manage the automation, monitoring, and security of this infrastructure.
−Removed: As our customers’ data grows, and our revenue with it, we continuously and smoothly deploy additional infrastructure.
−Removed: More than half of our employees are either software engineers that develop and improve the software that runs our Storage Cloud or Cloud Operations employees that specialize in network operations, site reliability engineering, technical operations, and supply chain, which operate our software and systems to deliver our infrastructure as a service and our cloud services.
+Added: As our customers’ data grows, and our total revenue with it, we continuously and smoothly deploy additional infrastructure.
+Added: A significant amount of our employees are either software engineers that develop and improve the software that runs our Storage Cloud or Cloud Operations employees that specialize in network operations, site reliability engineering, technical operations, and supply chain, which operate our software and systems to deliver our infrastructure as a service and our cloud services.
Our Cloud Service Offerings
−Removed: B2 Cloud Storage.
+Added: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.
B2 Cloud Storage provides customers direct access to our Storage Cloud to store, use and protect data.
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backup, archive and tape replacement;
−Removed: repository for analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning;
+Added: repository for analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning;
and Internet of Things (e.g., storing data for surveillance systems, autonomous vehicles, and smart devices) .
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Our customers consist of a wide range of organizations and businesses—particularly mid-market organizations—and consumers.
−Removed: As of December 31, 2021, we had approximately 500,000 customers in over 175 countries, including approximately 440,000 customers using our Computer Backup cloud services solution and approximately 74,000 customers using our B2 Cloud Storage solution (approximately 14,000 customers use both our B2 Cloud Storage and Computer Backup solutions).
−Removed: Our customers span a range of industries, including a broad range of businesses, MSPs, developers, media innovators, creative agencies, academic institutions, government agencies, research institutes, gaming
−Removed: companies, and individuals.
−Removed: Our customer base is highly diversified, with no single customer accounting for more than 1% of our revenue in 2021 or 2020.
+Added: As of December 31, 2022, we had over 500,000 customers in over 175 countries, including approximately 436,000 customers using our Computer Backup cloud services solution and approximately 87,000 customers using our B2 Cloud Storage solution (approximately 16,000 custo mers use both our B2 Cloud Storage and Computer Backup solutions).
+Added: Our customers span a range of industries, including a broad range of businesses, MSPs, developers, media innovators, creative agencies, academic institutions, government agencies, research institutes, gaming companies, and individuals.
+Added: Our customer base is highly diversified, with no single customer accounting for more than 1% of our total revenue in 2022 or 2021.
Sales and Marketing
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In addition to generating customers, our content generation efforts have contributed to building a community of thousands of partners.
−Removed: Our developer, alliance, and MSP partners expand use cases and attract customers, thereby increasing the usage of our platform.
+Added: Our technology and developer, channel, and MSP partners expand use cases and attract customers, thereby increasing the usage of our platform.
Our marketing efforts focus on establishing our brand, generating awareness, creating leads, and cultivating the Backblaze community.
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We have plans to increase our investment in our sales and marketing capabilities to capitalize on our large and global market opportunity.
+Added: We have also stood up a Developer Evangelism team to support our focus on supporting developers and applications storage use cases, and scaled up our partnerships team to grow our technology and channel partnership opportunity.
Research and Development
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and legacy on-premises storage vendors such as Dell EMC.
−Removed: We compete based on a variety of factors, including ease of adoption and use;
−Removed: continued innovation;
+Added: While we compete primarily based on offering services that are significantly easier to use and lower cost, but also through continued innovation;
key platform features;
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partner ecosystem;
−Removed: and capabilities for configurability and APIs.
+Added: and capabilities for configurability and APIs, we believe we stand out by offering a substantially easier to use product and significantly lower pricing.
Intellectual Property
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Policing unauthorized use of our technology and intellectual property rights is difficult.
−Removed: Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary technology and our intellectual property rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or obtain
−Removed: and use our technology to develop applications with the same functionality as our offerings.
+Added: Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary technology and our intellectual property rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or obtain and use our technology to develop applications with the same functionality as our offerings.
In addition, while we have confidence in the measures we take to protect and preserve our trade secrets, they may be inadequate and can be breached, and we may not have adequate remedies for violations of such measures.
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Employees and Human Capital
−Removed: We have a highly aligned and engaged workforce with relatively little employee turnover and long tenure.
−Removed: As of December 31, 2021, we had 270 full-time employees, including 98 new full-time employees hired during 2021.
−Removed: During 2021, only 16 employees left the Company.
−Removed: A majority of our employees are based out of our San Mateo, California headquarters.
−Removed: However, since March 2020 and throughout all of 2021, employees generally worked remotely due to the COVID pandemic.
+Added: We believe we have an aligned and engaged workforce with relatively limited employee turnover.
+Added: As of December 31, 2022, we had 393 full-time employees, including a net of 123 new full-time employees hired during 2022.
+Added: A significant amount of our employees are based out of our San Mateo, California headquarters.
+Added: However, since March 2020 and throughout all of 2021, e mployees generally worked remotely due to the COVI D pandemic.
+Added: Our offices reopened during 2022 and most employees located in proximity to our headquarters office location utilize a hybrid approach which includes a mixture of working in the office and working remotely from home.
Culture is very important at Backblaze and we recognize that employees are our greatest asset.
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No employees are represented by a labor union with respect to his or her employment by us.
−Removed: We have not experienced any work stoppages, and we consider our relations with our employees to be good, as evidenced by our Glassdoor 4.7/5.0 rating, 93% CEO Approval, and 94% Recommend to a Friend ratings as of March 6, 2022.
+Added: We have not experienced any work stoppages, and we consider our relations with our employees to be good, as evidenced by our Glassdoor 4.8/5.0 rating, 95% CEO Approval, and 95% Recommend to a Friend ratings as of February 1, 2023.
Our principal executive offices are located in San Mateo, California.
−Removed: We lease data center facilities in California, Arizona, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
+Added: We lease data center facilities in California, Arizona, Virginia, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
We believe that our properties are generally suitable to meet our needs for the foreseeable future.
−Removed: In addition, to the extent we require additional space in the future, we believe that it would be readily available on commercially reasonable terms.
+Added: In addition, to the extent we require additional space in the future, we believe that it would be available on commercially reasonable terms.
Corporate Information
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Compared sentence by sentence after normalising whitespace, quotation marks, case and digits, so re-formatting and restated figures do not read as changed language. Wording changes appear as one removal and one addition. The current filing and the prior one are authoritative.