Backblaze is taking its fight with the big three cloud storage vendors — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Storage (GCS) — to the streets with the general availability of its S3-compatible APIs for its B2 Cloud Storage (B2). 

The company made its cloud storage API public with a beta launch in May. A compatible S3 API essentially removes the work for a developer working with an S3 API to access B2. This allows developers to write new code to work with B2 and point existing workflows and tools at B2 and “not miss a beat,” said Backblaze VP Ahin Thomas.

After two months of performance tuning, more than 1,000 unique S3-compatible tools were used by customers to interact with the S3-compatible layer such as CloudBerry, MinIO, and Synology – all of which had pre-existing integrations with Backblaze. 

Thomas noted how customers brought a “wide variety of tools that we had not previously seen upload data to Backblaze,” like user agents from Commvault, Cohesity, and Veeam, all of which, he said, are registered in the company's internal reporting. 

Backblaze got its start in 2007 backing up friends’ and families’ computers and has since emerged a formidable competitor with more than 100,000 other customers and brands like American Public Television, Patagonia, and Verizon’s Complex Networks under its belt.

In March, B2 Cloud Storage crossed over the 1 exabyte of data storage mark from customers in 160 countries –  for reference, that’s a one with 18 zeros behind it. To have recorded 1 exabyte of data, a video call would have to have started 237,823 years ago, the company said.

The S3 API has become a de facto industry standard interface for object storage in both on-premises and private cloud deployments. While it offers flexibility in retrieving and storing data, it comes with a hefty price tag – which explains why an S3-compatible API was the most requested feature, Thomas said. 

Backblaze trailblazed a path of its own in the cloud with a product that costs less than virtually every other competitor – including AWS, GCS, and Azure, which charge around $0.020 per gigabyte (GB) per month  – and still manages to turn a profit while charging one-fourth of the cost at $0.005 per GB per month and $0.01 per downloaded GB.  

Along with the launch of S3-compatible APIs for B2, Backblaze isn’t changing its fee structure at all. This comes at a time when executives that delayed moving to the cloud are leaning on internet services more than ever. 

“Before the announcement, executives had more problems than answers,” Thomas explained. “Those already using AWS know that their business cannot sustainably scale in the Amazon cloud because of the cost and complexity. The same issues – cost and complexity – leave those that need to adopt the cloud without an understanding of where to get started.”

Whether organizations are just taking the dive into the cloud or pointing their existing tools to upload data to B2, Thomas explained, Backblaze can aide to both of those groups. 

Through the cloud-to-cloud migration program executives can liberate their data from the "walled garden of AWS and shave up to 75% off their storage bill in a matter of days,” he added.

The San Mateo, California-based startup bills itself as a digital Robin Hood of sorts, sworn to free IT nerds and technophobes alike from the tyrannical rule of the cloud oligarchy — a term the company has coined for the “expensive, opaque, and complicated”  vendor offerings that dominate the market — and on-premises storage.

“In a category filled by cloud oligarchs, Backblaze has earned a rabid following by providing transparency and actual operating data so customers can understand how 'the cloud' really works. In the case of Drive Stats, Backblaze is the single largest publisher of hard drive reliability data, period,” Thomas explained. 

As if undercutting AWS, GCS, and Azure with the price of its B2 offering wasn’t enough to make Backblaze a thorn in their side, the company – along a with heady list of cloud providers and content delivery network companies led by Cloudflare – banded together in an attempt to reduce data transfer fees.

The Bandwidth Alliance members include Microsoft, IBM, Digital Ocean, Packet, Vapor IO, Automattic, DreamHost, Linode, and Scaleway. They aim to reduce or eliminate fees that are currently charged to transfer data between their respective private network interface or private interconnections that typically reside in the same facilities.