Backblaze CEO on GTM Strategy & AI Demand on M&E Datasets

Cloud storage company Backblaze has been posting record revenue as customers of hyperscalers and AI companies turn to the organization for handling larger datasets related to AI and media & entertainment (M&E).

Channel Insider interviewed Gleb Budman, Backblaze CEO, to discuss the company’s recent go-to-market transformation, revenue growth drivers, and the role of partnerships in scaling its enterprise presence.

Go-to-market transformation changes across partner-focused teams

Roughly a year ago, Backblaze appointed Jason Wakeam as its new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), who has been driving transformation on the sales and partnership side of the organization.

Wakeam has brought in new talent to the organization, including a VP of sales, head of partnerships, a sales enablement team member, and a customer success leader, along with a number of new account executives.

“One of the things he’s been doing is upskilling the team, teaching them how to do more discovery with customers, how to support partners better, and how to qualify and make sure that we are a good fit for the customer when we’re engaging with them,” said Budman.

He adds that the organization has also revamped its marketing approach, with VP of Marketing Patrick Thomas refocusing their marketing efforts to emphasize the efficient use of resources and hone in on messaging.

As for the channel, Budman says that Backblaze has been increasingly moving upmarket as an organization.

“We’re driving success for the channel, both by working with them in terms of providing them a good product offering for their customers and doing co-marketing with them, but also by driving actual leads to them,” Budman explained.

Wins with AI and M&E

One key factor that Backblaze found when speaking with AI customers was that they want to retrieve their data from storage to the GPU cloud they’re using as quickly as possible, when it’s ready.

B2 Overdrive is a recent product from Backblaze that addresses this need. Budman says that Backblaze aims to not just help customers store their data, but enable customers to protect and use their data.

Partnerships’ role in scaling Backblaze’s enterprise presence

Backblaze partners play a critical role in ensuring that customers have the complete solution they need.

For example, in AI, customers need a place to store a large amount of data and a means to quickly transfer it to the GPUs, along with the necessary GPU providers. Backblaze partners with GPU companies to enable us to provide a joint solution to customers that addresses their needs.

“As we look forward, we want to solve customer problems increasingly better, and that means partnering with technology partners, companies like the backup providers, the media workflow companies, the neo-clouds, and others,” said Budman. “We also want to increasingly lean in with channel partners– a lot of whom are the ones that put these solutions together on behalf of the customer.”

Planning for future success

The release of new solutions for Backblaze will continue to be a key part of the organization’s growth strategy, alongside fostering strong partnerships.

The Anomaly Alerts product is currently in private preview but will be available to all customers later this year. The product enables customers to detect issues with their data early.

Backblaze’s enterprise web console, which simplifies B2 Cloud Storage management for enterprises and MSPs, allows larger organizations to have better and easier management control over their systems.

“One thing I’ll tell you with the enterprise web console with role-based access controls, I thought that when we would launch that customers would basically say ‘okay, cool, I’m glad you did that,’” Budman said. “And when I talked to the sales team, when they showed it and let customers play with it in private preview, the customers came back and said ‘wow, that’s awesome. That is so much easier than I expected managing these things to be.’”

Budman said that this feedback really spoke to one of the things they lean on, and that’s helping customers with making it easier to manage their data.

The enterprise web console is in private preview, but it will also be going into general availability later this year.

Budman also emphasized the AI revolution and how that has been a force multiplier in the ecosystem.

“When we looked at it a year ago, zero of our top 10 customers were AI customers. Now three of our top 10 customers are AI companies,” said Budman. “We’ve had 70 percent growth in the number of customers that are AI companies on our platform and 40x growth in the amount of data that they’re storing.”

As Backblaze works closer with the channel and with partners, the growth they’re seeing due to the AI demand is also helping drive growth for their partners.

Earlier this year, Backblaze announced the B2 Overdrive solution. Learn more about the high-performance cloud storage solution and how it enhances data throughput performance.