One year ago I attended Cloud Camp, a gathering of early adopters of cloud computing. Primary questions there centered on: “How do we define cloud computing?

Last Thursday I attended GigaOm Structure 09 and the discussions were full of cloud computing success stories, explanations of deployments, insights about how to scale bigger, offerings of cloud services at various levels and more. Below I summarize my takeaways from the day’s events.

Is Cloud Computing Real or Just a New Term for Old Technologies?
The short answer: Yes.

Many of the concepts of cloud computing have existed for years: large datacenters, hosted servers, online service offerings (think Yahoo! Mail), and even multi-tenancy (in most mainframes.) In part, cloud computing is a packaging of these into a term renovated for today.

However, cloud computing is more than just marketing. It is both a business model and technological change for the providers and consumers of these computing services. While startups could have always avoid directly deploying hardware by paying a hosting provider, the ability to pay for usage rather than signing year-long contracts dramatically changes the playing field when launching a new service with unpredictable demand.

What are the Tiers of Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is standardizing on three key tiers:
* Infrastructure-as-a-Service
Amazon Web Services‘ EC2 and S3 are primary examples in this category where raw computing power such as processing and storage can be rented. GoGrid, Nirvanix, Rackspace, Savvis, and 3Tera are other examples. Some of these offer the infrastructure as a web-service, where you simply purchase “1 GB of space.” Others offer a hardware-as-a-service model in which you actually specify how many servers you want and how they are configured. Control versus the desire for hands-off outsourcing will drive which of these two models is ideal for your organization.

* Platform-as-a-Service
Google AppEngine, Force.com, and Microsoft Azure are primary examples in this category where a hosted development environment is provided upon which applications can be built and the underlying hardware is abstracted out. These platforms are ideal for developers wishing to get products to market quickly, but lock-in to the platform can be a concern. Some vendors are attempting to offer the ability to use standardized frameworks that could be portable, but this is in its infancy. Facebook Platform is also an example of a platform-as-a-service, though one in which applications would be deployed only within the Facebook experience rather than on the public Web.

* Software-as-a-Service
Examples of this category are all around us: online banking, Yahoo! Mail, Google Apps, and, of course, Salesforce.com.

What level should you engage in? As a consumer, the answer is obvious: you are simply a user of numerous software-as-a-service offerings. As a developer, you may choose to build upon an infrastructure-as-a-service or platform-as-a-service, depending largely on your desire to tradeoff control versus speed of deployment.

Will there be a Segmentation Amongst Clouds?
Scale is a critical component of clouds since the ability to scale up and down quickly relies on having both a large deployment and multiple-tenants across which spikes are smoothed out. However, companies consuming cloud services may have differing requirements that would push vendors to offer different clouds types. A basic examples of this segmentation is the different size server instances offered through EC2. However, other possible needs include quality-of-service guarantees, HIPAA or SAS70 compliance, or specific geographic or hardware requirements.

We are already starting to see cloud differences appearing:
* Amazon focuses on a broad-based offering.
* Nirvanix focuses on clouds for enterprises.
* RackSpace focuses on customer support.

Will clouds segment? Yes, but likely into a handful of major sites that still allow for the scale required to extract the benefits of cloud computing.

Does Cloud Computing mean the end of Scalability Issues?
Startups bringing the next high-definition-video-social-network may become wildly successful and require quickly scaling to millions of users. Cloud computing purports to easily address this by enabling these companies to simply add servers and storage as quickly as they are needed. While this may seem to solve all scalability issues, developers that have dealt with scale in the past understand that the fundamental architecture of the application needs to be developed to handle scale issues and cannot purely rely on scaling hardware.

If a program requires significant computation and the code is written to allow parallel processing, adding CPUs in the cloud can enable the computation to happen much quicker. Alternatively, if the code were written single-threaded, no amount of extra hardware will help speed the process. Cloud computing may reduce the need for system administrators on staff, but it does not negate the requirement for top-tier engineers.

And Finally, is Cloud Computing Inevitable?
Cloud computing is certainly in a phase of dramatic growth, with vendors providing new offerings and customers experimenting and adopting. There is no doubt that this trend will continue due to the benefits of scale, cost, operations, and segmentation of skill-sets. However, it is not inevitable that everything will move to the cloud. Certain organizations will have needs that are too custom-tailored to create a segmented cloud and will retain their internal systems - potentially building a ‘private cloud’. Of course, companies should evaluate the pros and cons for their own environments and for most there are likely many opportunities to move applications into the cloud and derive significant benefits.

Nearly 1 of 2 people (46%) lose data every year according to a study of Backblaze customers. Shocking? It surprised me at first glance, but then I dug in deeper.

Drive Failures
According to a Google study of hard drive failures, disk drives over a year old have about a 1 in 10 chance of failure each year. At this rate 1 of every 2 drives will fail every 5 years. A person that has a hard drive in their computer and an external drive for that period is nearly guaranteed to have one die.

Computer Theft and Computer Loss
15% of households annually experience burglary or theft according to the Bureau of Justice. While statistics are not available for what was stolen, when a home is burglarized, a computer is a likely target. According to the Ponemon Institute, 637,000 laptops are lost at airports across the country every year. How many more in taxi cabs, coffee shops, and at vacation destinations?

Viruses and Software Corruption
Various surveys across the web have shown that viruses cause 4% - 7% of all data loss. Add software corruption to the mix, boot sector issues, registry issues, etc. and this starts becoming significant.

Flooding, Fire, Earthquakes, and Other Disasters
According to FEMA, about 1 in 10 households that have flood insurance suffer a loss each year due to flood damage. Half a million buildings catch fire every year based on USFA statistics. Nearly 200 earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.0 or greater occur worldwide annually according to the USGS. Computers are sensitive devices and don’t like to be wet, hot, or shaken.

Human Error
“Oops” is the #2 most common cause of data loss (after hardware failure) according to data recovery specialist Ontrack. Is the delete key too big on the keyboard? Blame it on that…but all of us have done it and wished there there were an undo key that was just as big.

Losing data doesn’t always mean a hard drive crash. Sometimes it just means we deleted a folder (with our kids photos) or our dog knocked over an external drive (with our music library.) Whatever the cause, based on the actual needs of our customers, the various causes of data loss compile to require 1 of every 2 customers to restore data each year.

Today is the 5th day of Backup Awareness Month and these three people have already won their 1-year subscription to Backblaze online backup:

June 1st: Zé Rui Marques
June 2nd: Tim Slater
June 3rd: Michael Koch

Each of them simply clicked the Start Backing Up button to get a free trial on that day and were randomly selected to win a year of online backup free. They also now have a 1 in 30 chance of winning the Nikon Coolpix P90 camera.

Some Contest Clarifications:
You can win a year free - even if you are already a customer.
Backing up a laptop with Backblaze but have a desktop that isn’t backed up? Install the service on your desktop and it will be entered to win a year free. We’re still giving away 27 more free 1-year licenses this month. Add your other computers now.

You have a great chance to win the Nikon Coolpix P90.
As a daily winner, you have a 1 in 30 chance to win the Nikon camera.

Tell your friends to increase your chances.
If the person that wins the Nikon camera was recommended by you - you will win a Nikon camera too! Every time you recommend a friend, they will be entered to win…and effectively so are you.

There has never been a better time for you to add a computer or to help your friends and family get backed up. Tell them on Twitter, Facebook, Digg or in person!

Backblaze has made a new release available and some users are being automatically upgraded. Below are the enhancements in this release:

Release Date: 6/5/09
Windows Version: 1.0.0.149
Mac Version: 1.0.0.150
Auto-Update: Some Users

Minor release to address a few small issues including:

Cloned Drive Primary Drive Selection
A small percentage of (mostly Mac) users that clone their drives were unable to select their primary drive for backup. This is fixed.

Backups Halt Temporarily
A small percentage of users have backups stop for an hour once per day. This is fixed.

Only users that seemed to be potentially affected by these items were auto-updated. All users will get these fixes during their next auto-update.

Backblaze has made a new release available and all users are scheduled to be automatically upgraded. Below are the enhancements in this release:

Release Date: 6/2/09
Windows Version: 1.0.0.143
Mac Version: 1.0.0.144
Auto-Update: All Users

Cloned Drive Support
In April, Backblaze released a dramatically improved system for supporting external drives. Previously when an external drive was unplugged it would be treated as a drive that vanished and then reappeared when plugged in again. The new system remembers external drives and treats them uniquely from built-in drives. The new system also provided an interface to manage these external drives.

One thing we discovered after releasing this new system was that a significant number of people (primarily Mac users) cloned their drives. When a drive was cloned, it made it seem as if the same drive existed in two places at the same and confused the new external drive system.

This release enhances external drive support to better support customers who clone drives. The system detects the cloned drive, informs the user, and allows them to de-select that drive from backup. A few enhancements were also added to handle situations that appeared as cloned drives.

Email Support Issue Dialog
Backblaze provides a web page form and an email address to enable users to contact support. Once in a while, our support team is unable to respond to a user’s question because either the user mistyped their email address or our reply email is getting caught in their spam folder. To rectify this issue, this version has a notification system added that will pop-up a dialog via the Backblaze software to notify the user that our support team was unable to contact them and request they contact us via an alternate email address.

Better Exclusions Sort (Mac)
The Backblaze Mac exclusions list shows the folder being excluded. However, since some folder names (such as “Library”) exist in multiple paths, this version includes an option to “Show Path.” The exclusion list shows the directory path by default. This was done to support each platforms standard approach.

Extra Exclusions
We are always listening to users and looking for directories that contain temporary and other unnecessary files. This release added the TechTool cache directory to the exclusion list along with several other minor items.

Backblaze is constantly listening to customer feedback and innovating internally. The new features, bug fixes, and underlying enhancements that result from these become available in various releases of the Backblaze service. One of the pieces of feedback we heard was that some of you wanted to know more about these releases. We listened and I wanted to share our philosophy and approach:

Rollout Timeframe
Large releases with significant architectural changes are qualified internally and put through a rigorous beta testing period before being made available publicly. Small bug-fix or feature-enhancement releases are thoroughly qualified internally and tested with a smaller group of customers. While all customers are eventually automatically upgraded to the new release, larger releases are often rolled out gradually over a couple weeks or more.

Mac and Windows Simultaneous Release
By writing the system cross-platform from day one, we are typically able to do simultaneous releases - ensuring that Mac and Windows users have an identical experience and feature set. At times, there is a feature that is specific to one platform (for example, supporting Resource Forks is important on the Mac and does not exist on the Windows) which requires a slightly different release - but we tend to keep them nearly in sync.

Auto-Update Options
Most people just want their computer - and their backup - to work behind the scenes. As such, Backblaze automatically upgrades its software to the latest version. However, some users requested the ability to see if there was a new version available and they had not yet been auto-updated. We listened and added a “Check for Updates” option in the menu bar. You never need to click this - but if we are doing a rolling update, this will let you know that there is a new version available.

New Release Communications
Historically we quietly made improvements to the service and users would silently benefit. For large releases, such as the launch of the Windows version or the Mac version, we would publicly communicate the availability via the press and our blog. However, in order to minimize the amount of email we send to our customers, we did not send any communication regarding incremental releases. Going forward, we will publish what is new in each release here on our blog and send a notification via our Twitter account. We believe this is a good balance of letting users who are interested know without over-emailing our customers.

When we set out to build a backup service anyone could use, we assumed this was something people wanted to just install and forget - and for most people this was the case. However, we also found there is an entire base of people passionate about backup who want to stay involved and educated. For those of you in this latter category, I hope you enjoy the enhanced insight.

For Backup Awareness Month, Backblaze conducted its 2nd annual user backup study. Well, we still have a ways to go as only 6% of consumers are doing regular backups.

To celebrate Backup Awareness Month, continue spreading the message, and get people backing up their computers, we are giving away a Free 1-Year Subscription to Backblaze every single day this month.

And at the end of the month, Backblaze is going to randomly select one of the daily winners to win a new Nikon Coolpix P90 camera. Moreover, to help the people who helped their friends and family backup…if someone referred the winner of the Nikon camera - they will win a Nikon Coolpix P90 camera as well.

Being entered is simple: just install the free trial and start backing up your computer.
We will randomly select one winner per day!

Already backing up with Backblaze? Help a friend start backing up! Do it in person, via Twitter or Facebook, or shout from the rooftops. It’s good karma and you could win a cool camera.

Couple notes:
* People who have previously installed are not eligible.
* We’ll be emailing winners every few days.
* Share this with your friends so you don’t end up as their data crisis counselor!

Josh Pigford at TheAppleBlog was excited by the arrival of a new simple drawing application for the Mac called “Paintbrush” that brought back the pixelated times of the past. To celebrate, he challenged his readers to create images with the new app and offered to give two 1-year subscriptions to Backblaze to the best ones.

A few people really stood up to the challenge and created some amazing art.
Here are the two winning designs (by Sean Leary & DangerDude):

You can probably guess to which one I’m partial.

Congratulations to both of you and enjoy the Backblaze service!

Two weeks ago Backblaze launched the Mac version of its unlimited online backup service. As part of the launch, we randomly selected 25 people who installed on the day of launch to receive a free 1-year license to the Backblaze service.

I wanted to share a few of the responses we received when notifying the winners:

“I am thrilled! I look forward to continuing to use your wonderful product!”
“Wow, what great news!”
“Love the product so far (although I hope I never need to use it!)”
“I have this installed on my shiny new MacBook Pro Unibody, and just finished my first backblaze backup. Sweet, eh?”

All of the winners can backup their computer and any USB or Firewire-attached drives - ensuring their photos, music, and other documents are safe for the year to come.

The winners who claimed their prize, including one who said “Awesome, I never win anything ” are:

Alex Vermulst
Brandon White
Jeremiah Mankin
Kevin Katz
Ramon Silva
Mark Allen
Simon O’Brien
James Kachel
Peter Kazanjy
Mike Chasman
Jason Clarke
Tymothy Bryce
Paul Hibbitts
Phillip Riggs
Neil Berkman
Dan Crane II
Cris Mitchell
Adam Simon
Ray Smuckles
Louis Plante

Congratulations to all of you and enjoy the Backblaze service!

Backblaze loves the Mac, and even tried to bring back Steve Jobs, so we’re very excited today to make our unlimited online backup service available to all Mac users.

With half the founding team originally from Apple, we couldn’t wait to support the Mac platform. We’re thrilled to do so and to see some of the reactions so far:

TUAW: Backblaze for Mac officially launches
MacWorld: BackBlaze online backup debuts for Mac
TechCrunch: Backblaze’s Online Backup Solution For Macs
TidBits: Backblaze Publicly Launches Online Backup Service for Macs
VentureBeat: Simple backup service Backblaze now available to all Mac users
MacNN: Backblaze debuts ‘effortless’ backup for Macs
TheAppleBlog: Backblaze for Mac Now Live
Download.com: Easy backups for Mac: BackBlaze
5ThirtyOne: Backblaze: Secure unlimited automatic backups for $5
MacsimumNews: Backblaze announces Mac Online Backup

At core, Backblaze for the Mac delivers on the same vision - making backup simple:
* Installing is simple - just download, enter an email and password; you’re done.
* Running it is simple - nothing to do; backs up continuously and automatically.
* Pricing is simple - $5/month or $50/year per computer for unlimited storage.
* Restoring is simple - select any files; download or we’ll FedEx a DVD or hard drive.

Here is a screenshot of the Mac Preference Pane:

While the underlying backup system was always developed cross-platform, during the beta we also learned a lot from feedback from thousand of users, resulting in us:
* Improving notifications
* Starting to backup resource forks
* Adding an uninstaller to the install package
* Excluding numerous extra application-specific temp file directories
* …and many other items that we built/fixed/changed.

We also learned Mac users love their external drives, with some users having as many as 6 USB or Firewire drives connected to one system.

While we always supported backing up external drives, we developed a new interface that showing which drives are connected/disconnected, selected for backup or not, or Boot Camp/Time Machine. Now, not only does Backblaze automatically backup external drives…but provides an at-a-glance view of the status.

We hope you enjoy the service.

Cara is a good friend of ours and a we had a great time trying to shoot something for the Backblaze home page. As a bonus, Cara does all of her own stunts so we were able to use real fire with real gasoline instead of CGI fire.

Dan Tynan’s article “The 7 dirtiest jobs in IT” hit a nerve with many an IT worker, and Dan followed it up with, “Even dirtier IT jobs.”

Number 6 on the list of the dirtiest jobs? Data crisis counselor.

This is a person on the other end of the phone from “sobbing adults who’ve lost images or videos of their recently deceased parents” and dentists, and IT managers, and tons of others who lost data and were frantic, upset, and panicked. Kelly Chessen, who has this job for DriveSavers, a firm that tries to recover data from dead hard drives, says her five years on a suicide prevention line is what prepared her best for this position.

Have you been an unwitting data crisis counselor for a friend or family member?
Make sure they backup so you don’t have to be…

Since the company started, Backblaze has offered unlimited storage for its online backup customers. However, as users have taken more photos, downloaded more music, smashed VHS tapes into their DVD readers, and generally created more data, their needs have grown.

As Nat Tumatch of Morespace, Wyoming says,

Unlimited is too limiting. Do I look like an unlimited type of guy? I need more!

Well, we heard you. We gave our engineers Red Bull-infused, coffee-flavored, energy bars and said we need more space. And they delivered. After deeply analyzing the complex theorem of infinity:

…They, well, then just multiplied it by 2.

Today, Backblaze announces “2x Unlimited Storage”:
The Most Unlimited Storage Available Anywhere:
* More than on your computer.
* More than on your external drive.
* More than Google Gmail offers.
* More than Backblaze offered before, um, we doubled it.

Be among the first to experience the revolutionary “2x Unlimited Storage.” Try it now >

Cloud service are forecast to be a bright spot amidst dire economic times. Reaching $56.3 billion by end of 2009, cloud services are expected to generate 2x the revenue of Google (which is partially included) and a growth rate that exceeds the company’s 18% year-over-year rate. By 2013, Gartner expects cloud services to reach $150 billion in sales.

Revenues from cloud application services (such as Backblaze) “were almost twice as large as the market for systems infrastructure and will continue to show strong growth,” according to the Gartner report.

While there is a lot of discussion about terminology and taxonomy (”cloud services” vs “SaaS” etc.)…there is no doubt the market for infrastructure and applications provided over the Internet has arrived.

Kodak Gallery, formerly known as “Ofoto”, claims to be the leading online digital photo developing service. Customers upload photos to the site, use it as a way to store and share photos online, and count on it as a photo backup.

However, today Kodak updated its storage policy to say that it will delete your photos if you do not purchase products from the company each year. Specifically, every 12 months customers storing:
* Less than 2 GB of photos need to purchase at least $4.99
* More than 2 GB of photos need to purchase at least $19.99
With a $100 digital camera shooting at 8 megapixels, just 500 compressed photos or 40 uncompressed photos would take you over the 2 GB limit.

Kodak Gallery provides a good photo developing service and should be able to charge for it. However, if you are counting on this as a backup of your photos - think again. Forget to purchase your minimum requirement one year? Bought your minimum, but then added some more photos and went over 2 GB? Your photos may be deleted.

Kodak Gallery’s terms of service say,

“You should keep a copy of each image you upload in a secure place. We are not responsible for deleted images.”

Ensure your photos are safe, in a secure place, forever. Back them up with Backblaze.

Online backup service provider Carbonite was all over the news this week for suing two of its suppliers, claiming the vendors setup the systems that were responsible for losing 7,500 customers’ data. First published in The Boston Globe, the story was picked up by TechCrunch, Computerworld, Cnet, and at least 20 other media outlets.

A large number of users losing their data certainly makes for good headlines and stories about the risks of cloud computing, but I think there is a different story here.

Carbonite’s CEO complained the media response was overblown. He claimed, correctly, that the majority of these reports were misleading. While 7,500 customers’ data was lost, only a small percentage of users (54 in total) actually lost data because this data was a backup and most people still had the the files on their computers.

Numerous articles also used this as an opportunity to raise doubts about using “the cloud” in general. Again, this seems to be a red herring. As a whole, cloud computing is generally more available and reliable than systems users put in place themselves. What’s more, backup is the ideal cloud computing application because it adds to the reliability by having data offsite that you already have locally.

What was missed in the news is that a company who’s core business is to provide online backup outsourced their online backup. Carbonite hired a system integrator, and now by suing this vendor, they are effectively denying responsibility for the backup systems.

This would be the equivalent of Google outsourcing search technology.

Building robust online backup technology is difficult. There are certainly lots of complexities involved to ensure data is backed up, redundant, and secure. It is the role of the online backup service provider to have the technical expertise and laser focus to work through these items. Pushing it off on an outside company just seems a bit …risky.

Update: After writing this post, David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, emailed me to state that while they purchased the Promise Technology boxes from system integrator, Interactive Digital Systems, they now write their own software.