Wasabi’s 2019 Update

2019 has been a year of tremendous growth for Wasabi. Not only have we expanded our brand and customer base, but we’ve also expanded across the Atlantic to open our first data center outside of the United States. There’s so much new growth happening at such a rapid pace that it can be hard to keep up with it all. So for those of you who have blinked once or twice this year, this blog will serve as a catalogue of all the changes you might have missed at Wasabi in 2019.

More, more, more

If you need to understand one thing about Wasabi’s 2019, it’s that we’ve been growing our business by nearly every conceivable metric. We’ve seen a 400% uptick in paying customers since 2018, at a rate of about 200 new customers per week. This growth speaks to the strength of our product offering. Early on, customers might have been skeptical  about giving their valuable data to a startup. But now, we’ve proven ourselves to be a viable alternative to Amazon, Google, and Microsoft and our increase in customers is proof positive of that. 

To support all this new growth, we’ve added 30 new employees to the Wasabi staff. It’s inspiring to see the company nearly double in size from last year. The only challenge is learning all these new names!

Partnered up 

Of course, all this success isn’t ours alone; we also have our partners to thank. 2019 saw the launch of the Wasabi Partner Network Program which has signed up hundreds of partners since its launch in April. Our ecosystem of technology alliance partners, managed and cloud service providers, and system integrators have increased their margins or packaged Wasabi’s storage as part of their product. 

Perhaps the biggest piece of Wasabi partner news so far this year is our certification as Veeam ready, allowing Veeam customers to point their backups to our cloud and saving up to 80% on storage costs in the process. This has been a huge boon to Veeam CSPs who have passed the benefits of a low-cost cloud object storage platform on to their customers. 

Getting our name out there

This increase in Wasabi’s customer base goes hand-in-hand with an uptick in brand awareness. I remember in years past, a common phrase at a Wasabi trade show booth would be something along the lines of “Who the heck are you guys?” Now, our appearances at events see massive amounts of traffic. Attendees seek us out from across showroom floors and our booths are regularly swamped. It’s hard to quantify a thing like the number of times I meet somebody who has heard of our company, but every time it happens I’m proud of all the work our team has done to make Wasabi a known brand. 

Wasabi worldwide

As our customer base and brand expanded in 2019, so did Wasabi’s global reach. This year saw Wasabi go global with the opening of our first European data center. Our Amsterdam location, which opened in March, has been performing extraordinarily well in the short time since its launch. Amsterdam collected its first Petabyte of data in only two weeks; for context, it took US-east five months to store that much data when Wasabi first launched. 

Minding your business

The most inspiring thing about seeing Wasabi take off is seeing our customers able to spend more time doing what they want to be doing and less time worrying about their data storage. I remember the days when having a big server room was seen as a corporate status symbol. The blinking lights behind a glass door was a sign that a company was looking toward the future. But today, it makes as much sense to have your own server room as it does to have your own electric plant generating your power for you—it’s not your business’s core competency and it only distracts from your mission. Data is incredibly valuable, so it should be trusted to a company for whom data management is their sole focus. That way you’ll know your data is in safe hands. 

This is especially true in the research and education sector, which has become one of Wasabi’s fastest growing markets. These institutions generate boatloads of data, and all of it is immensely valuable. I shudder to think about the knowledge that would be lost if any of that data is mismanaged. These problems don’t really happen with professional cloud services, and Wasabi’s immutable buckets make doubly sure of that, ensuring that your data is never deleted by human error or a malicious actor.

I’m floored by Wasabi’s growth in 2019. We’ve come such a long way from where we were just one year ago. Our team has continued to deliver an excellent product that more consumers trust. I look forward to seeing what the future holds.