27. Industry plays

Same product, different first sentence. Backblaze publishes industry pages for each of these (backblaze.com/cloud-storage/industries/*, checked 2026-10-14).

Higher education and research

• Pain: research data growth, grant-funded budgets, tape, ransomware at universities.
• Hooks: HECVAT completed, Internet2 Cloud Scorecard and I2PX connectivity, Whistic Education profile, no egress penalty for collaborators pulling data.
• Proof: Cal Poly Humboldt (eliminated surprise bills, shrank Google footprint), Pittsburg State (Object Lock off-site backups), UCSC Silicon Valley, Coast Community College District, Gladstone Institutes (900+ tapes eliminated, 450 researchers).
• First question: “Who pays when a collaborator downloads the dataset?”

Healthcare and life sciences

• Pain: imaging archives, genomics, ransomware targeting hospitals, HIPAA.
• Hooks: BAA, SSE-B2 default, compliance-mode Object Lock, Segmed 750 TB medical imaging migration for AI research.
• Careful: say “BAA available”, never “HIPAA certified”. Confirm PHI handling with their compliance team.
• First question: “Where is your immutable copy of PACS and EHR backups?”

State and local government (SLED)

• Pain: ransomware on municipalities, tight budgets, procurement vehicles.
• Hooks: GovRAMP Progressing Snapshot, TX-RAMP Provisional, predictable pricing for annual budgets, term commits.
• Careful: not FedRAMP. Check state contract vehicles [verify available cooperative contracts].
• First question: “What did your last cyber insurance or state audit ask for?”

Financial services

• Pain: retention mandates, audit, ransomware.
• Hooks: compliance mode, legal hold, SOC 2 Type 2, Boreal Capital Management and Bell Bank stories.
• Careful: SEC 17a-4 style WORM attestation is a specific requirement. [verify whether Backblaze has a third-party 17a-4 assessment before claiming]

Media, sports, creative

• See whiteboard 10. TPN Blue Shield; Eagles, ACL, American Public Television, Falcons Creative Group, Steve McCurry Studios, Trailerfarm.

Surveillance and video security

• Pain: retention requirements for camera footage, NVR storage limits.
• Hooks: no minimum duration (footage rolls off on a schedule), lifecycle rules by prefix, Object Lock for evidentiary holds.
• First question: “How many days of footage must you keep, and how often do you pull it?”

Gaming

• Pain: asset delivery spikes, patch distribution, user-generated content.
• Hooks: CDN origin with $0 partner egress; Overdrive for concurrent upload/download peaks (Overdrive page lists gaming).

E-commerce and SaaS

• Pain: COGS, image and media serving, backups of production DBs.
• Hooks: drop-in S3, presigned PUT uploads, CDN partner egress, Big Cartel and Tribute stories.

Houses of worship

• Pain: weekly service video, volunteer staff, small budgets.
• Hooks: simple setup with NAS sync, low cost per TB, streaming via CDN.

Kubernetes and Microsoft 365 backup

• K8s: Kasten K10 by Veeam with Object Lock; Velero-compatible S3 target [test Velero config before claiming].
• M365: Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 to B2. Pitch: keep the backup outside the Microsoft tenant’s blast radius.

MSPs

• Partner API, Groups, Object Lock for insurer checklists, Computer Backup for endpoints, Fireball/MSP360 seeding.
• First question: “How many client backup stacks land on storage you do not control the price of?”