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<keyword id="6354576" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="facebook">Facebook</keyword> on Monday introducing two new data portability types that will help users directly transfer their posts and notes to <keyword id="587351" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Google-documents">Google Documents</keyword>, Blogger and <keyword id="825836" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Wordpress">WordPress</keyword>.com.<br /><br />The social network last year enabled people to transfer their photos and videos to <keyword id="1591577" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Backblaze">Backblaze</keyword>, <keyword id="285445" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Dropbox">Dropbox</keyword>, <keyword id="11123853" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="google-photos-and-koofr">Google Photos and Koofr</keyword>.<br /><br />"To better reflect the range of data types people can now transfer to our partners' services, we're renaming the tool 'Transfer Your Information," said Steve Satterfield, Director of Privacy and Public Policy.<br /><br />"We designed this tool with privacy, security and utility in mind. We'll ask you to re-enter your password before the transfer starts and encrypt your data as it moves between services, so you can be confident it will be transferred securely," he said in a blog post.<br /><br />The users can access the tool in Facebook settings under "Your Facebook Information" and clicking "Transfer Your Information." <br /><br />The company said it plans to expand its data types and partners in the future. <br /><br />"However, the ecosystem we are building to support data portability will not come to fruition without regulation that clarifies which data should be made portable and who is responsible for protecting data once it has been transferred," the company noted.<br /><br />Facebook's photo and video transfer tool is based on code developed through the open source Data Transfer Project.<br /><br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/dream11-parent-company-looking-for-an-ipo-in-the-us/articleshow/82139123.cms">Dream11’s parent company is reportedly the latest contender for a public market debut in the US</a><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/razorpay-raises-160-million-at-3-billion-valuation-plans-for-more-acquisitions/articleshow/82137901.cms">Razorpay raises $160 million at $3 billion valuation, plans for more acquisitions</a><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/what-is-allowed-and-what-is-not-during-the-15-days-lockdown-in-rajasthan/articleshow/82138686.cms">Here’s the list of what is allowed and what is not during the 15 days lockdown in Rajasthan</a><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/checkout-what-is-allowed-and-what-is-not-during-the-curfew-in-delhi-as-per-the-new-guidelines-of-19th-april-2021/articleshow/82142384.cms"><strong>Delhi’s one week curfew: checkout what is permitted and what is not</strong></a><br />

You can now transfer your Facebook posts to WordPress and Blogger

<p class="source"><span>BackBlaze</span></p><p class="caption">BackBlaze CEO Gleb Budman</p>Over the last 10 years, Silicon Valley startup <a href="http://www.backblaze.com">BackBlaze</a> has quietly established itself as a useful and popular service, letting you back up your entire PC or Mac to the cloud for $5 per computer per month.<p><span>On Thursday, BackBlaze CEO Gleb Budman revealed to Business Insider that the </span><span>company just closed a $5 million sales quarter, putting it on track for a $20 million annualized run rate (ARR), the amount of money that BackBlaze projects it will bring in this year if its current rate of business continues.</span></p><p><span></span><span>Compared to certain other Silicon Valley startups, BackBlaze isn't necessarily a standout. </span><span>Dropbox, one of BackBlaze's biggest competitors, is also ten years old this year. Dropbox, valued at $10 billion, is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-is-free-cash-flow-positive-2016-6">free cash flow positive</a> as of mid-2016, and recently announced that it <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-1-billion-annual-run-rate-2017-1">was on a $1 billion run rate</a>.</span></p><p><span>But there's a very big difference between BackBlaze and the so-called Silicon Valley "unicorns." Over the last decade, Dropbox has raised over $600 million in venture capital funding, plus an additional $1.1 million in debt financing. BackBlaze, for comparison, has only ever raised $5 million in 2012, well after the business was already profitable. </span></p><p><span></span>It's a far cry from the company's modest start, where its self-funded beginnings meant that they <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/backblaze-challenges-amazon-web-services-with-b2-cloud-storage-2015-9">built their first storage servers out of wood</a> (seriously). Now, with about 50 employees, including all five founders, BackBlaze has gone from nothing to sustainable business, in an industry where profitability is not taken for granted.</p><p class="source"><span>Budman</span></p><p class="caption">One of BackBlaze's first wooden servers.</p><p><span></span><span>"Never in the realm of possibility" did Budman think BackBlaze would ever get this far. Now, as the company plans to enter its second decade, Budman reveals the ins and outs of building a Silicon Valley startup the non-Silicon Valley way.</span></p><h2><span>The money problem</span></h2><p><span>When Budman and his four co-founders started up BackBlaze in 2007, they made a pact: They would pool most of their personal savings together to get the company off the ground, and take no salary for their first year, regardless of how the business was going.</span></p><p><span>That agreement carried two additional stipulations, still in effect to this day.</span></p><p><span>First, while none of them were interested in taking cash from outside investors at the start while they figured out their business, they would meet every six months to discuss the possibility of raising a traditional round of funding. That twice-annual meeting was where they decided to take their $5 million round in 2012.</span></p><p><span></span></p><p class="source"><span>Backblaze</span></p><p class="caption">A BackBlaze data center, loaded with its trademark "storagepod" servers.</p><p><span>Second, they would tie their salaries to each other and the company. If they could afford to pay their people $10 an hour, all five men would get $10 an hour. And so on, as the company grew and could pay more competitively, with all of them getting exactly the same pay package even to this day. </span></p><p><span>There were downsides to this, especially at first - "I can't live on ramen forever," Budman says of the lean times - but as the company found its footing, it became a real boon. Budman says that he's seen startups fail when their founders fight over money and who's getting paid what, but team BackBlaze was, and is, all in the same boat.</span></p><p><span>"We don't really talk about it," Budman says. </span></p><h2><span>Leverage</span></h2><p><span>That by-your-bootstraps approach has other benefits, too, including allowing the founders to do what they wanted, when they wanted, without having to succumb to investor pressure.</span></p><p><span>"It's certainly nice not to have to raise money," Budman says. </span></p><p><span>The temptation was there, Budman says, and they could have ridden the Silicon Valley startup boom to raise massive funding rounds at inflated valuations just like many of their peers. </span><span>But the question that always stopped them was simple: "Do we really know what to do with this money efficiently?"</span></p><p class="source"><span>BackBlaze</span></p><p class="caption">The original BackBlaze headquarters, circa 2007.</p><p><span>"Sure, we would have come up with ways to spend," Budman says, but none of them would have been particularly smart or strategic for the company. When BackBlaze did raise the $5 million in 2012, it was with the specific purpose of building new products like the B2 storage cloud, a service for software developers, and a new version of BackBlaze specifically for businesses.</span></p><p><span>The disadvantage of taking venture capital money, he says, is that it means that their investors will "have to get their money out somehow." That means either an IPO or selling to a bigger company. But Budman isn't concerned about being rushed to any outcome: BackBlaze is starting to prepare for a possible IPO, but not planning on it. </span></p><p><span>And if the day ever comes when their investors start leaning on them for a quick sale or a faster IPO, Budman says, BackBlaze has potential parties waiting in the wings who could buy out their shares, buying them more time. Because the company is stable, there's plenty of time to make the right decision, he says.</span></p><h2><span>Unicorn chasers</span></h2><p>The appeal of working at a lot of high-flying Silicon Valley startups is the notion that, thanks to their stock grants, they could possibly cash out big when their company goes public or gets acquired for billions. Basically, it's like playing the lotto, betting that long hours or frustrating management will pay off when your options vest. </p><p>Because BackBlaze is taking that more considered approach toward a possible exit, it's unattractive to a certain kind of Silicon Valley programmer; Budman says a friend recently used the term "unicorn chaser" for engineers who just go from one billion-dollar to the next hoping to hit the jackpot.</p><p>Instead, Budman is looking for employees willing to take a longer-term approach, not because they're locked in with stock options (though they do get equity in the company), but because they want to be there. Budman notes that unlike lots of long-running startups, all five founders are still in the BackBlaze office daily, working.</p><p class="source"><span>BackBlaze</span></p><p class="caption">BackBlaze receives a massive shipment of hard drives in 2012.</p><p>"We are hoping this'll be the last job they'll ever have," Budman says, noting that it's a "weird concept" for Silicon Valley. "We hope BackBlaze pays them well; we hope they will stick around for a while." </p><p>In the decade that BackBlaze has been in operation, Budman says, he can think of four times when people quit the company of their own volition (as opposed to being otherwise let go). He says employees come to him with offers from competitors that they turned down. </p><p>He says that it's something he's particularly pleased with. As he gets older, he says, he appreciates more and more that having a dream job isn't about getting paid well or strategic career moves, it's "am I happiest here?"</p>             <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/clear-iphone-space-storage-video-2016-12">The best way to clear out a ton of space on your iPhone superfast</a></h3>                                    Please enable Javascript to watch this video

How a startup went from building servers out of wood to a $20 million business - without giving control to outside investors

<ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>The coronavirus crisis forced startups to scramble for ways to cut costs, including drastic headcount reductions.</strong></li><li><strong>But some startup CEOs and founders have opted to make layoffs a last option as they try to survive the crash. Some have even vowed not to cut anyone. We talked to </strong><strong>6 CEOs and founders who have made protecting their employees' jobs a priority in navigating the downturn.</strong></li><li><strong><strong>Emil Mikhailov, CEO of XIX, a San Francisco visual AI startup, told his employees: </strong></strong>"Think about the pay cut you can comfortably take without compromising the needs of your families. There are no right or wrong numbers - whatever decision you'll take is the right one."</li><li>Gleb Budman, CEO of Backblaze, also told his employees that "things are fine" and that there will be no layoffs. A key reason, he said, is that the data storage startup strived to be a "cockroach," a resilient, financial robust startup. "It doesn't sound as flattering as a unicorn, but it survives a nuclear war," he told Business Insider.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/prime?module=article&amp;area=summary"><strong>Click here for more BI Prime stories.</strong></a></li></ul><p>As the coronavirus crisis escalated in March, Emil Mikhailov, CEO of the AI startup XIX, sent an email to his employees, warning them to prepare for a recession when their top priority will be to "to survive the storm." </p><p>"It's not clear what is going to happen," he wrote.</p><p>Then he made a vow: "We as a team will not lose anyone. We will sacrifice short-term to make sure everyone is OK."</p><p>The downturn has upended the world of startups, many of which are scrambling for ways to cut expenses, including layoffs. But some startups are stressing the need to protect their employees' jobs as they figured out ways to survive the downturn. </p><p>Some CEOs and founders, like Mikhailov, have even promised not to cut anyone.</p><p>Cutting headcount to survive this crisis has become a controversial subject in the startup world.  Sequoia Capital, one of the most prominent venture capital firms in the world, drew criticism for its "<a href="https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/coronavirus-the-black-swan-of-2020-7c72bdeb9753">Black Swan letter</a>," which cited headcount as one of the areas that startups could "evaluate critically whether you can do more with less and raise productivity."</p><p>One <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sequoia-black-swan-letter-herd-mentality-job-cuts-2020-4">startup CEO argued</a> that the letter created a "herd mentality" that prompted some startups to prioritize job cuts in responding to the crisis.</p><p>Another VC firm, Sapphire Ventues, shared its tips in "<a href="https://sapphireventures.com/blog/considerations-for-when-letting-people-go/">Considerations For When Letting People Go</a>" which encouraged startups to consider other cost-cutting strategies "before taking the unpleasant step of letting people go," such as company wide pay cuts and reducing the salaries of CEOs and top executives.</p><p><strong>These 6 startup CEOs shared their strategies for avoiding laying people off as they navigate the downturn:</strong></p><p class="tagline"><i>Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you'd like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please email <a href="mailto:covidtips@businessinsider.com">covidtips@businessinsider.com</a> and tell us your story.</i></p><p><i>Get the latest <a href="/coronavirus-business-impact">coronavirus business &amp; economic impact analysis</a> from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is affecting industries.</i></p>

6 startup CEOs explain their strategy for making sure that layoffs are only ever a last resort in a recession, from slashing expenses to asking employees what kind of pay cut they can afford

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Backblaze/YouTube</span></p><p class="caption">Backblaze CEO and co-founder Gleb Budman</p></div><p></p></div></div>Amazon Web Services is an unstoppable juggernaut in the cloud services world, contributing a projected <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-cloud-grows-even-bigger-2015-7">$7 billion</a> to the retail giant's revenues this year alone. </p><p>A big part of that dominance is thanks to Amazon S3, a super-popular cloud storage option that's most easily described as like Dropbox for programmers to store all the data they need for web and mobile apps.</p><p>All of the images on Tumblr, for instance, are hosted with Amazon S3. </p><p>The killer feature of Amazon S3 is price. Because Amazon Web Services operates at such massive scales and tremendous levels of effieicncy, it's able to offer storage at an ever-shrinking cost to customers. Right now, Amazon S3 pricing starts at <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/">three cents per gigabyte stored</a>. </p><p>But there's a new player in the market: <a href="http://www.backblaze.com">Backblaze</a>, a profitable, popular startup that lets users back up as much data as they want to the cloud for $5 a month or $50 a year.</p><p>Now, Backblaze is taking its eight years of experience with helping users back their computers up to the cloud and using it for "B2 Cloud Storage," a new service that charges a measley $0.005 per gigabyte stored - as much as 500 times cheaper than Amazon S3.</p><p>For price-conscious developers, that potential savings could make all the difference in the world.</p><p>And the really ironic part? If Amazon S3 had been cheaper eight years ago, Backblaze would never have developed the expertise it needed to compete in the first place.</p><h2>No money, no choices</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Backblaze</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Backblaze's founders met at an email security startup called MailFrontier, which was then snapped up by SonicWall in 2006, says CEO and co-founder Gleb Budman.</p><p>In 2007, one of the future Backblaze founders, still at SonicWall, was doing tech support for a relative who had accidentally and permanently deleted an important file. That engineer was shocked to find that the relative had absolutely no backups in place.</p><p>This led to a moment of inspiration, and Budman and other one-time MailFrontier executives were gathered to build a simple, straightforward way for people to back their stuff up to an online service for a predictbale, $5/month price. In 2007, Backblaze was officially formed.</p><p>In order to stay disciplined on building the product, Budman says, Backblaze's founders decided not to raise venture capital, instead relying on the team's pooled savings to get the business off the ground. The thought was that taking venture cash would force Backblaze to focus on pleasing investors rather than building a sustainable business.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Backblaze</span></p><p class="caption">The current model of the Backblaze storage pod.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"At the most basic level, it makes people believe that money comes from VCs," and not from actually making sales, says Budman.</p><p>In fact, they made the mutual arrangement to go without a salary for the first year of Backblaze's existence - an arrangement that would actually extend to five years total.</p><p>Which was great, but it meant that Backblaze was starting from a disadvantage. </p><p>The original plan was to use Amazon S3 on the backend to build Backblaze as a simple storage system that would let them host their customer's data. </p><p>There was just one problem: The pricetag. Amazon S3 was, and is, very cost-efficient for developers hosting a relatively modest amout of data.</p><p>For Backblaze, though, which planned on storing its customers' entire hard drives in the cloud, Amazon S3's price was too high. Backblaze would either have to charge its customers an unrealistically high pricetag, or else take a loss on their $5/month pricing goal. Either way, Amazon S3 just wouldn't work for them.</p><p>"Because we didn't have any money, we didn't have many choices," Budman says. </p><h2>"Really entertainingly terrible"</h2><p>So Amazon S3's pricing model was too expensive, and Backblaze didn't really have the cash to buy commercial hardware from the likes of Dell or HP.</p><p>This meant that Backblaze had to get creative. In this case, creativity manifested itself as an ambitious plan to build its own high-capacity, low-cost storage servers, called "StoragePods."</p><p>Backblaze hit upon a method for taking sixteen hard drives, stripped out of consumer-grade external hard drives by hand, and attaching them to a motherboard to make a simple server.</p><p>Those servers, with hard drives in tow, would then get placed into a custom server housing that they actually made out of wood. Those handcrafted, arsitinal wood-carved servers would then get driven out to a data center where they rented some space and installed. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Budman</span></p><p class="caption">One of Backblaze's first wooden servers.</p></div><p></p></div></div>A wooden server isn't exactly industry standard, but it was enough to get Backblaze its first few customers. And, most importantly for the young company, these StoragePods were extremely cheap to manufacture. </p><p>Eventually, the StoragePod design evolved: It got a steeel casing, and they were able to cram in 25 drives with around 5 petabytes of storage each. And thanks to developing relationships with the suppliers of the casings and hard drives, costs stayed low compared to the revenue that the storage business was starting to bring in.</p><p>In the early days, of the company, Backblaze would actually have monthly StoragePod assembly parties, Budman says. They would go to their VP of Engineering's one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco and just slap hard drives into cases all night long. </p><p>That was bad enough, but they'd also have to go through the tedious process of "burning in" those hard drives, Budman says, which involves running them constantly for a week straight to ensure they're more reliable when they're in the data center.</p><p>This meant that at any given time, there was always a server or two sitting on the TV stand, humming away day and night and heating the place up. Eventually, Backblaze shelled out for a shed in the backyard for burning-in purposes.</p><p>Those early days were "pretty entertainingly terrible," Budman says. </p><p>But that work in cost reduction didn't go unnoticed: When Backblaze released the blueprints for the StoragePod as a free download in 2009, over a million people took a look, which blew Budman away.</p><p>"This isn't kittens or porn, it's a storage server," Budman says.</p><p>Even <a href="https://www.backblaze.com/blog/netflix-you-flatter-us/">Netflix has taken the StoragePod concept and applied it to delivering HD movies</a>.</p><h2>Competition with Amazon</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Backblaze</span></p><p class="caption">Backblaze's Silicon Valley HQ.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The StoragePod has let BackBlaze ride to success.</p><p>The company is profitable, and was able to hold off on taking its $5 million Series A round of funding until 2012, which was its fifth year of operation. Even then, Budman says, the funding was to fund growth, not a move of desperation. </p><p>Today, Backblaze operates its own data centers, and stores over 150 petabytes of customer data. It's that focus on saving cash at all costs that gives Backblaze its competitive edge now, Budman says. </p><p>"Because we did that from the get-go, we have this storage that's incredibly cost-efficient," says Budman.</p><p>In other words, Amazon may have an obscenely huge reach, with gigantic data centers that means it can offer cloud storage at razor-thin margins, locking itself into the so-called "race to zero" with competitors like Google and Amazon.</p><p>But Backblaze does nothing but think about how to get the most bang for their buck, and squeeze as much storage capacity as it can out of its continually-evolving StoragePod design, Budman says. The newest Storage Pod, version 4.5, boasts 180 terabytes of capacity, and Backblaze still needs to put in 20 to 30 new ones per month (but no longer in anybody's apartment, thankfully).</p><p>Which means that B2 Cloud Storage can offer even lower prices, and still make the company a healthy amount of money on volume.</p><p>And if Amazon S3 had just taken this stance when it started, Budman says, it would never be facing the threat of B2 Cloud Storage. </p><p>"The reality of it is, if this had existed at the time, we wouldn't have had to build our own," Budman says.</p><p class="tagline">Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/drone-flies-inside-a-hurricane-2014-9">This Drone Goes Inside A Hurricane To Gather Data That Could Save Your Life</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="g3eDRwcDq7Pl5eT09NlbCFefQFjt0MB-" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

How this startup went from 'pretty entertainingly terrible' to challenging Amazon head-on

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Backblaze/YouTube</span></p><p class="caption">Backblaze CEO and co-founder Gleb Budman</p></div><p></p></div></div>Last month, Google's VP of Infrastructure made an unusual request to computer hardware manufacturers: build hard drives that are less reliable.</p><p>It seems silly - why would Google want its <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-data-centers-2014-10">data centers</a> to use drives that are more likely to <em>lose </em>data?</p><p>The answer is simple: Thanks to a radical rethinking in how data centers are built, tech companies like Google don't need a reliable hard drive, as much as they need lots of cheap, high-capacity ones. After all, with Google's massive reach, the data is copied all over the globe anyway. </p><p>"[W<span>e] already have to have that data somewhere else anyway," writes Google's Eric Brewer in a <a href="http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/Google-seeks-new-disks-for-data-centers.html">blog entry</a>. "</span><span>It's not that we want the disk to lose data, but rather that we can better focus the cost and effort spent trying to avoid data loss for other gains such as capacity or system performance."</span></p><p><span>Google may find that convincing hardware vendors to heed its advice and play along isn't so easy. </span></p><p><span>Although the needs of Google and other big customers have changed in recent years, the hardware industry still builds products as if it were 1999. </span></p><p><span><span>Business Insider talked to Gleb Budman, CEO of popular data storage and backup startup </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/backblaze-challenges-amazon-web-services-with-b2-cloud-storage-2015-9">Backblaze</a><span>, about the market forces that have transformed the industry, and about why <span>big hardware companies, like </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dell-acquires-emc-vmware-2015-10">Dell</a><span>, HP <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">Enterprise</keyword>, and IBM will need to do a lot of soul-searching if they want to stay relevant in a world ruled by cloud computing.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span></span></span>"There's not as much need for companies to build big, expensive hardware systems," Budman explains.</p><h2>'They make billions by not doing it'</h2><p>Technologically speaking, there's no reason why the established legacy hardware manufacturers couldn't do as Google's Brewer asks, Budman says. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But for companies like Dell and HP, doing as Google asks would basically require jettisoning some of their most lucrative businesses.</span></p><p>"They make billions of dollars off not doing it," Budman says. "They haven't been forced to make that shift."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Dell</span></p><p class="caption">EMC CEO Joe Tucci (left) shakes hands with Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell (right)</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Historically, companies like Dell and HP have made a mint from selling storage hardware. In the consumer PC market, hardware is low margin. But when they sell to businesses, they can sell even basic stuff like hard drives at a huge markup, citing additional enterprise features and reliability. </p><p>In the past, corporate customers, for lack of a better option, accepted that as the cost of doing business. As the PC started to infiltrate the home and office, companies had to build server rooms and data centers. </p><p>For years, that was how it had to be. But then in the late 2000s, everything changed.</p><h2>Enter the iPhone</h2><p>In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, kickstarting a whole new era in computing. Suddenly, everybody was carrying an Internet-connected device with them at all times, always. That created an avalanche of new data, all of which needs to be stored somewhere.</p><p>When you upload a photo to Instagram, that data has to go somewhere. Similarly, when you get an e-mail on Gmail, that message lives on a server somewhere. And as phones get better, Internet speeds get faster, and services like YouTube and Facebook video get more popular, we're uploading more stuff than ever before.</p><p>Check out this chart Brewer shared of the YouTube upload rate, projected through 2016:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Google</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>This is where <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-amazon-is-so-hard-to-topple-in-the-cloud-and-where-everybody-else-falls-2015-10">cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure fit in</a>. The cloud providers basically store all the videos, photos and other data that consumers and businesses create. </p><p>It's incredibly cost-prohibitive for cloud providers to buy pricey enterprise storage products in the quantities they would need to keep up with demand. </p><p>"A cloud-first data center is different," Budman says. </p><h2>Rethinking everything</h2><p>The bad news for the old guard of hardware vendors is that the cloud providers and internet companies are signaling that they would <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-why-dell-is-paying-67-billion-for-emc-and-how-it-could-backfire-2015-10">vastly prefer not to buy from them if they don't have to</a>.</p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The best example: Facebook has its <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-open-compute-project-history-2015-6">Open Compute Project</a>, a multi-company initiative to build smarter data centers that rely less on expensive vendor products and more on intelligently rethinking the basic components - right down to the hard drive.</span></p><p>Earlier in 2016, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-eu-data-center-open-compute-project-2016-1">Facebook opened up its sixth global data center powered entirely by Open Compute Project tech</a>. It didn't use any equipment from established enterprise vendors. If they <em>had,</em> at Facebook's scale,<em> </em>it would have been a massive payday for the vendor of choice. </p><p>Amazon Web Services and Google are more secretive about their operations, but they're similarly working hard to reduce their spending on expensive enterprise technology - why spend the money when they can build something in-house that's better and cheaper? </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Facebook</span></p><p class="caption">A Facebook engineer slots in a Open Compute Project server</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>As the cloud gets more popular, it eats away at spending on data centers, Budman says.</p><p>And as that happens, it slowly but surely eats away at the bottom lines of enterprise equipment manufacturers like the Dell-EMC combo. Worse, the cloud vendors <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-predicts-more-aws-dominance-2013-5">aren't buying enough of what they're selling to make up the difference</a>.</p><p>That puts the hardware makers in a tough spot.</p><p>Sure, Dell, HP, EMC, IBM, and other vendors could focus their energies on selling stuff that the cloud companies need, rather than trying to protect their stakes a shrinking market, Budman says. But it would require a certain willingness to let go of a high-margin business in search of a new niche in a cloud world.</p><p>Still, Budman doesn't think all hope is lost for the legacy vendors.</p><p>"They've reinvented themselves numerous times," Budman says.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-information-nsa-iphone-android-data-personal-2016-2">Columbia law professor argues that 'privacy has been privatized'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="BvNWt0MDE6F1PRUtoFI9vkuaEC8Xulyd" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Why hardware vendors need to sell Google and Facebook lousier products if they want to survive

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>TMT Investments</span></p><p class="caption">Igor Shoifot, left, and Julian Zegelman, partners in venture capital firm TMT Investments.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Traditional venture capital firms are trying to get a piece of the cryptocurrency action. <br /></strong></li><li><strong>One such firm, TMT Investments, is launching a new fund to invest in startups focused on blockchain technology before they hold initial coin offerings.</strong></li><li><strong>The partners are pitching themselves as the adults in the room who can offer expertise to technically talented but inexperienced founders.</strong></li></ul><p><br />The finance world is going crazy for all things related to cryptocurrencies.</p><p>Bitcoin is soaring to ever-greater highs. And earlier this year, the amount of money raised by startups via initial coin offerings, a basically unregulated form of fundraising involving the issuance of new digital currencies, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/09/initial-coin-offerings-surpass-early-stage-venture-capital-funding.html">surpassed the amount of money raised by early-stage internet companies</a> via traditional venture capital funding.</p><p>Now, some traditional venture capital firms want to get a piece of the action.</p><p>Among them is TMT Investments, a tech-focused firm with $70 million under management that has previously invested in companies including recruitment analytics firm Gild, cloud storage firm Backblaze, and ecommerce startup Wanelo. TMT is now branching out into the cryptocurrency space. On Wednesday, it's announcing a new $60 million fund that will invest explicitly in firms that focus on blockchains, the digital ledger technology that underlies bitcoin, ether, and other similar cybercurrencies.</p><p>In a call with Business Insider, partners Igor Shoifot and Julian Zegelman outlined their sales pitch. They're essentially trying to be the adults in the room - even if they wouldn't exactly put it like that.</p><h2>The TMT Crypto Fund wants to help 'brilliant technologists'</h2><p>Blockchain startups are often led by people with incredible technical talent but little in the way of business acumen, experience, or professional contacts, Shoifot and Zegelman argued. The companies won't gain any of that experience or those contacts from the anonymous investors who provide them funding through an initial coin offering, or ICO. But they are things that TMT can offer, they said.</p><p>"The fact that someone's a brilliant technologist means nothing about that person as a great business person," Shoifot said.</p><p>TMT plans to invest in blockchain startups in the traditional venture capital fashion - offering cash in return for equity, before any potential ICO.</p><p>"What we want to do is start helping these companies in [the] pre-ICO and pre-pre-ICO period," said Shoifot. "[Teach them] what a startup is, what business is, how to build an actual business, not just a technological dream."</p><p>But in a twist, TMT's fund will have a cryptocurrency component to it. Of the fund's $60 million total, $45 million will come from traditional investors, or limited partners. Some of that amount has already been committed, Zegelman said. TMT plans to raise the other $15 million by selling its own cybercurrency tokens to outside investors. Those investors could then potentially buy and sell those tokens on public exchanges.</p><p>Over the last few months, there has been confusion and debate about whether ICOs and the sale of crypto-tokens should be regulated like sales of stock, rather than be subject to basically no rules. At least with its particular planned cybercurrency, TMT plans for it to be treated like a traditional security that would be sold only to officially accredited investors. Unlike the case with the typical ICO startup, that stance would allow TMT to know the names of its investors.</p><p>"It would be a fully compliant security token," Zegelman said.</p><h2>Venture capital is waking up to cryptocurrencies</h2><p>Other VCs are also feeling the lure of cryptocurrencies  - and fear the potential downside if they miss the boat.</p><p>"This is going to turn arrogant venture capitalists on their heads," Mangrove Capital Partners partner Michael Jackson <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/68c795ca-a680-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97">recently told The Financial Times</a>. "Venture capitalists are going to have to enter into the ICO game to prove their value to companies."</p><p>Some venture capitalists are getting involved in the space indirectly. Sequoia, Andreeseen Horowitz, and Union Square Ventures - three high-profile tech investment firms - <a href="http://polychain.capital/">have all invested in Polychain Capital</a>, a "hedge fund" that  invests in blockchain and cryptocurrency companies. </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/eyelid-surgery-in-south-korea-2015-11">Why Korean parents are having their kids get plastic surgery before college</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Hoping to cash in on cyrptocurrencies, one VC firm is starting a new fund - and plans to fund it with an initial coin offering

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/122662432@N04/13740073235/in/photolist-mWat5p-ofp1YP-2cNeb2-Jy4N5M-6MsVK8-6iRk6x-bTDxA6-kXxahX-9EJw4Z-BwS3T-4zz6FZ-875tuZ-zsiVWc-4AmKPY-osb3Wq-ohr6p2-bcBuoz-7RtUDM-chnocy-ofK1cx-nA8uB9-nzoLtZ-2cBvLk-9Y5S4L-qB6yMp-kTZtdP-5LwmAJ-b52QA-otLNQB-725HG-nsAHQF-c2qfCd-bN6w8H-cigQb7-7ShS5d-pFxWE7-opXBt7-bwRyni-63skAT-4oDUyJ-kZeBZ8-6KjkJK-oKCD4W-4kFupK-p3S1H-ftkXex-61a2PD-6mpw5v-abztai-xWDF1">Allan Rotgers/flickr</a></span></p><p class="caption">Losing data is a special kind of torture.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>I've made a lot of mistakes since I left New York to <keyword id="6354692" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Travel">travel</keyword> around the world as Business Insider's<span> </span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/harrison-jacobs">international correspondent</a>. By far the worst was when the external hard drive with all of my photos, videos, and interviews failed.</strong></li><li><strong>When I returned home in September, I decided to find a foolproof method for backing up all my important data so I would never lose it again.</strong></li><li><strong>I decided on three layers of backup security. I now back up everything to two highly reliable external hard drives and then use iCloud, Google Drive, and Google Photos as a fail-safe for my most important files and low-res copies of all my photos. </strong></li></ul><p>Mistakes are inevitable when you travel for a living. Flights are missed, visa forms are forgotten, and travel pillows and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pack-for-travel-electronics-dopp-kit-2019-1">power adapters</a> get left in hotel rooms.</p><p>I've learned to live with those kinds of mistakes, even <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/travel-advice-biggest-travel-mistakes-2018-10">keeping a running list of the worst mistakes</a> I've made while traveling. A few of the more humorous ones: visiting Mykonos when there were tons of cruise ships in port, getting a migraine after a single whiskey on a long-haul flight, and getting tricked by a tour company that kept changing its name to avoid its poor online reviews.</p><p>There was one mistake I made during my first six months on the road that was not funny at all. Even now, when I think about it, I get a little sick to my stomach.</p><p>It happened innocuously enough. I was editing photos while sitting on a couch in an Airbnb when I shifted a little too much and knocked my external hard drive, a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TKFEE5S/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=biip_012219_foolproof-photo-backup-system-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=B00TKFEE5S&amp;linkId=be6faffbe496c9a3c533ea893b3cb927">Seagate Expansion Portable Hard Drive</a>. The drive dismounted and, rather than keep editing photos, I went off to sleep.</p><p>When I plugged it in two days later, I heard a clicking sound. After trying every online-forum solution possible, I brought it to a data specialist and got the worst news: a head crash, the worst kind of hard drive failure possible. Even if the hard drive had been semi-recoverable, it would have cost me hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to recover the data.</p><p>Thanks to one bad jolt, I lost three months' worth of photos, interviews, and videos. When I found out, I had a full-blown panic attack.</p><p>When I came back to New York two months later, I decided that I needed a foolproof method to back up my data. Here's what I came up with.</p><h2>First, switch to a solid-state drive</h2><p>My first step was to find a reliable and fast external hard drive that I could trust as my primary backup. The best solution these days - though not the most affordable - is a <a href="https://www.storagereview.com/ssd_vs_hdd">solid-state hard drive</a>, or SSD.</p><p>The standard hard drives that most people use are hard disk drives (HDDs). Inside HDDs are spinning platters that store your data. The benefit of an HDD is that it is cheap for a high storage capacity. The downside is that, due to the moving parts on the inside, they are much more prone to failure. </p><p>Studies have shown that SSDs have annual failure rate of less than a tenth of 1%. HDDs can have a <a href="https://www.networkworld.com/article/2873551/data-center/debunking-ssd-myths.html">failure rate as high as 4 to 6%</a>. My hard drive that failed in Israel was a poorly made HDD. One slight shift in movement and the platters spun out of control and crashed. </p><p>The alternative, an SSD, uses integrated circuits to store your data, like a USB memory stick or the memory card in your camera. The benefit of an SSD is that it has no moving parts, making it able to absorb shocks, vibrations, and the occasional drop. SSDs tend to be much more expensive than HDDs, particularly for high storage drives, like what you would need for a backup hard drive or to store lots of photos and videos.</p><p>While SSDs have gone down in price in recent years, they are still considerably more expensive than an HDD, at about 5 cents per GB for HDD and 25 cents per GB for SSD. </p><p>I didn't want to worry so I splurged. I bought a 2 Terabyte Sandisk Extreme SSD <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078T9SZ3K/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=biip_012219_foolproof-photo-backup-system-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=B078T9SZ3K&amp;linkId=ce2dcb38ec8f0dc33964b7430e10a81c">for $400 on sale</a>.  I opted for the Sandisk because it is extremely reliable and the size of a business card. If you don't need a drive that small or with that large a capacity, there are many other cheaper options.</p><h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table center float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">If you're wondering what type of person you are dealing with: This is how I would lock my bicycle up in New York City. I don't take chances.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Back up your data and then back up again</h2><p>The Sandisk Extreme SSD became my first layer of security. All photos, video, and audio interviews are now backed up to this hard drive first.</p><p>But I wasn't satisfied.  This time around, I needed to follow the golden rule of computers: Accept that all hard drives will fail at some point.</p><p>Keeping that in mind, I knew I needed to back up my important data on more than one reliable hard drive, even if I was using an SSD.</p><p>Rather than buy another SSD, which would be prohibitively expensive, I decided to hedge my bets with a HDD from LaCie, a <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2018/08/13/review-lacie-rugged-raid-video/">well-reviewed French hard drive manufacturer</a>. LaCie's Rugged hard drives come encased in an aluminum shell with thick orange bumpers along the edges. They are considered to be <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2018/08/13/review-lacie-rugged-raid-video/">drop, shock, crush, dust, and water resistant</a>.</p><p>At $250 for the 5TB version, it was a little more than half the price of the SanDisk, but with more than double the storage capacity and strong durability. If I end up filling up the SanDisk during this trip, I know I have the additional extra space on the LaCie.</p><p>I began backing up all data on my primary computer and everything on the SanDisk to the LaCie, using <a href="https://www.lacie.com/gb/en/support/software/intego-manager-pro/">Intego Backup Manager</a>, a LaCie software that comes free with the hard drive. It's not the most user-friendly software I've ever used, but its far more customizable than Apple's built-in Time Machine software.</p><p>Now I have everything backed up in two places. That's better than one.</p><h2>The cloud is your safety net</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/4272009397">Flickr/Horia Varlan</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>I still wasn't satisfied. </p><p>If you are saying to yourself at this point, "This guy is nuts," well, you've never lost three months of information vitally crucial to your livelihood. It's a special kind of hell.</p><p>The final piece of my backup solution was to use a cloud backup service. These days, there <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288745,00.asp">are a lot of good online backup services</a> available for a yearly fee, like Carbonite ($60) or BackBlaze ($50). I have yet to try them out primarily because I'm traveling constantly - and therefore rarely have the steady internet to do full backups online - and because having all my data in the cloud makes me a bit nervous.</p><p>Instead, I decided to utilize the free cloud services I have at my disposal - Apple's iCloud, Google Photos, Google Drive. On all three, I use only the free versions. For iCloud<a href="https://support.apple.com/en-jo/HT204247"> that means 5GB</a>; for <a href="https://www.google.com/drive/">Google Drive, that means 15 GB</a>; and for Google Photos, you have unlimited storage so long as <a href="https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/206990-google-photos-unlimited-storage-for-free-with-a-few-gotchas">you are willing to limit your photo resolution</a>.</p><p>I use iCloud to backup vitally crucial personal documents and files. For Google Drive, I backup work documents and interview audio.</p><p>Finally, I use Google Photos to backup all my photos, which, as a photographer, I have a boatload of. The free photo quality on Google Photos is not high enough that I would be stoked about making professional prints with them, but it is more than enough for displaying photos on the internet. Considering it's my last resort - all the full high-definition versions of my photos are on my two external hard drives - I'm willing to live with that.</p><p>At the end of the day, it's peace of mind that I'm looking for. Having an elaborate, over-the-top backup solution helps me get that. Maybe it will help you find find your peace of mind too.</p><section data-track-content="" data-post-type="post"><ul class="read-more-links"><li><strong>More tips from Business Insider's international correspondent:</strong></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/diehard-iphone-ios-user-switches-to-android-oneplus-6t-2018-11" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">I switched to Android after more than a decade with the iPhone, and I'm not going back. Here's why.</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/travel-tip-find-healthy-good-cheap-food-2018-11" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">I use the same trick in any city I visit to make sure I find amazing food</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-couchsurfing-app-to-meet-locals-traveling-2018-1" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">Couchsurfing has a hidden feature that helped me have the wildest night in Tokyo partying until sunrise</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/multicity-flights-expedia-skyscanner-mistake-2018-10" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">I found out the hard way that one of the best strategies to save money on flights can end up costing you big time</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/best-travel-advice-skip-attractions-that-dont-interest-you-2018-10" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">The single best piece of advice I can give you for any trip you take</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/travel-advice-biggest-travel-mistakes-2018-10" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">I've traveled to more than 30 countries, and here are the dumbest mistakes I made on the road that I'll never make again</a></li></ul></section>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/get-more-storage-iphone-backup-2016-7">This one simple trick can free up a ton of storage space on your iPhone</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

After my hard drive crashed and lost 3 months of work, I devised a foolproof backup system to protect myself in the future

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Screenshot via MSQRD</span></p><p class="caption">Mark Zuckerberg trying out MSQRD</p></div><p></p></div></div>In 2013's "Iron Man 3," Tony Stark's digital butler sidekick JARVIS uses the Oracle Cloud to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlkH8cPz-2s">reconstruct a crime scene and track the villainous Mandarin</a>. It was a weird bit of product placement. </p><p>In 2016, though, when Facebook CEO <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-2016-new-years-resolution-2016-1">Mark Zuckerberg announced he was building his own version of JARVIS</a> to power his smart home, he decided to start from scratch and write it himself. </p><p>This, in a nutshell, is the problem with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-on-oracle-cloud-and-amazon-web-services-2016-9">Larry Ellison's bold claim that the newly upgraded Oracle Cloud will end Amazon's runaway dominance of the cloud computing market</a> with an alternative that's both faster and cheaper than the $10 billion Amazon Web Services juggernaut. </p><p>It's likely that the so-called "next generation" Oracle Cloud will capture a lot of existing Oracle customers as they move to the cloud computing model, where you can rent functionally unlimited supercomputing power for pennies per hour. </p><p>But the next generation of young, talented programmers - the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world - have very little incentive to jump on board the Oracle bandwagon, and every reason to keep on with Amazon Web Services, where they can do things their own way.</p><h2>Power isn't everything</h2><p>In a <a href="https://stratechery.com/2016/oracles-cloudy-future/">new edition of his Stratechery newsletter</a>, analyst Ben Thompson lays it out plainly: The Oracle Cloud's major advantage, as Ellison himself says, is at the high end of the power spectrum. If you're running super-intensive computing applications, Oracle Cloud does indeed seem to be faster and cheaper.</p><p>That's not the market Amazon is going for, though. The thing that's set Amazon Web Services apart isn't its performance or its price; it's the fact that it's a platform on which to grow. You can start small, with one or two servers, add capacity as you grow, and then instantly tag in new services like databases or video hosting or even artificial intelligence, you can just tag it in as you go.</p><p>Writes Thompson:<span> "Sure, it can get expensive - a common myth is that AWS is winning on price, but actually Amazon is among the more expensive options - but how much is it worth to have exactly what you need when you need it?"</span></p><p><span>In other words, Oracle Cloud is focused on power for the high end, but has less to offer around the low end. Amazon's strength is owning that low-end, then upselling more services a la carte as companies grow, change, or move more workloads to the cloud.</span></p><h2><span>Have it your way</span></h2><p><span>And speaking of a la carte, that pricing model has long been the key to Amazon's success. </span></p><p><span>While Amazon's biggest customers will pay a contracted rate, the vast majority of Amazon Web Services customers enjoy a pay-as-you-go model that reduces upfront investment and gives room to experiment and grow. It <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-horowitz-martin-casado-interview-2016-6">makes it easier to sell products straight to the software developer</a>, bypassing the traditional IT department procurement process. Under this model, developers can <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/twilio-ceo-jeff-lawson-ipo-interview-2016-8">just go online and get what they need, as they need it</a>.</span></p><p><span>Meanwhile, Oracle takes a very <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-cloud-sales-2015-7">old-school approach to selling big chunks of products all at once through the CIO's office</a>. It's not the way that developers enjoy doing business, and thanks to Amazon and the business models it's inspired, it's not something they have to put up with. </span></p><p><span><span>"Developers today have choices, and want to work with companies that are innovative, transparent, and friendly, and with platforms that are easy-to-use. For legacy vendors built on lock-in, closed systems, complex setups requiring long contracts and professional services - that would require a complete DNA swap," says Gleb Budman, CEO of Backblaze, which <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/backblaze-challenges-amazon-web-services-with-b2-cloud-storage-2015-9">competes with Amazon in providing cloud storage</a>.</span></span></p><h2>Not doomed</h2><p>Oracle will do just fine. For its biggest customers, the Oracle Cloud is a no brainer. Specific applications for stuff like sales and marketing can move up to the Oracle Cloud and save them some money, while the higher-end cloud infrastructure capacity in question is perfect for hosting large databases. </p><p>Oracles moves will also put pressure on its long-time rivals at Microsoft, who often compete for the same large <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> companies. If Oracle's making it easier for its existing customers to move up to the Oracle Cloud, it's that much harder for Microsoft to poach them to its own Microsoft Azure.</p><p>And with the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cloud-amazon-web-services-2016-9">sheer amount of well-paid cloud talent at work on the Oracle Cloud</a>, there's little doubt that it works as advertised. The technology, as presented, is impressive.</p><p>But almost any company starting today - the next Facebook or Dropbox (which started on Amazon and took years to move to its own data centers) or Snapchat (which runs on Google's cloud) or whatever - has few reasons to pick Oracle. Larry Ellison is correct that in many ways, Oracle's technology is way ahead of Amazon's, but that gap is narrowing faster than he thinks. And the company just isn't well-suited to competing on Amazon's turf.</p><p>There's always a chance. Oracle has lots of cash in the bank, they're investing heavily in research and development, and the money that comes in from older customers upgrading is going to be a major windfall. If Oracle can successfully invest in a true reinvention of itself, maybe it can hang. For now, it's going to be slow going.</p>   <p class="tagline">Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-locker-delivery-package-new-york-manhattan-2016-8">I tried sending something to an Amazon Locker and it was a terrible experience</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="BvMnRtNTE6ey96iMnnLpTEj_xls18tM2" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

You Searched For "Backblaze" and got 8 results

You can now transfer your Facebook posts to WordPress and Blogger

IANS

How a startup went from building servers out of wood to a $20 million business - without giving control to outside investors

Matt Weinberger

6 startup CEOs explain their strategy for making sure that layoffs are only ever a last resort in a recession, from slashing expenses to asking employees what kind of pay cut they can afford

Benjamin Pimentel

How this startup went from 'pretty entertainingly terrible' to challenging Amazon head-on

Matt Weinberger

Why hardware vendors need to sell Google and Facebook lousier products if they want to survive

Matt Weinberger

Hoping to cash in on cyrptocurrencies, one VC firm is starting a new fund - and plans to fund it with an initial coin offering

Rob Price

After my hard drive crashed and lost 3 months of work, I devised a foolproof backup system to protect myself in the future

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