Backblaze will leverage the new partnership to open its first data region in Canada, which will be based in Toronto, service the whole country, and become available in the first quarter of 2025.
https://www.backblaze.com/
Backblaze, a lower-cost cloud storage provider, has announced a new partnership with cloud solutions provider Opti9. The deal has major ramifications for Backblaze’s presence in the Canadian market. The deal will see Backblaze open a new data region in Canada, based in Toronto. Opti9 will also become the exclusive Canadian channel for Backblaze B2 Reserve and the Powered by Backblaze program.
Backblaze originally started in consumer-facing cloud backup, in which they built our own cloud. They launched their B2 cloud storage platform in 2016. In 2021, they went public and it became clear at that point that B2, which is object storage, was their marquee product.
“We now see ourselves as selling more directly into the enterprise with larger and larger deals,” said Jason Wakeam, CRO at Backblaze. “Our storage has superior performance and is well suited to enterprise cloud workloads.”
B2 Cloud Storage is secure, compliance-ready, always-hot object storage that is one-fifth the price of traditional cloud storage providers and can be used in any of the solutions Opti9 provides.
“Our data centre and Backblase B2 offerings are highly secure, and compliant with regulatory requirements,” Wakeam said. These include SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and HIPAA.
Opti9 is U.S.-based and has multiple American offices, but they also have an office in Ottawa. They have data centres in North America, Europe, and the APAC region.
“Our partnership with them is fairly unique,” Wakeam noted. “It is predicated on two things. It lets us expand further into the Canadian market. They are now our exclusive Canadian distribution for Backblaze B2 and Powered by Backblaze, the latter of which uses an API that lets our customers build offerings out for their customers.”
Opti9’s strong Canadian presence dates from their 2022 acquisition of Canadian IaaS provider HostedBizz, an award-winning Veeam partner.
“They now have a whole suite of backup services products, which they sell around the world, and now Opti9 is a Veeam platinum service provider,” Wakeam commented. “We found that we really enjoyed working with their leadership team, and that we have a shared vision of how to expand in both Canada and North America.”
Opti9’s exclusive distribution relationship with Backblaze replaces a much more ad hoc system that Backblaze had been using in Canada.
“We had a range of distributors that was used by our network of resellers,” Wakeam said. “Under this new system, both our existing resellers and Opti9’s resellers will have some fairly aggressive goals, as a growth opportunity for us both. This also reflects that the requirements for Canadian customers for data residency has become very strong, and provides a great opportunity for our current customers. Canadians’ access to Reserve and the Powered by Backblaze program also benefit from having a local data centre option.”
Wakeam indicated that Backblaze anticipates being able to properly service the whole Canadian market from the single Toronto data centre.
“This is because the sensitivity to latency is much less pronounced in backup use cases,” he said.
The new Canadian region will be available to customers in the first quarter of 2025.
