Backblaze to Present Strategy for Future-Proofing AI Initiatives at Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations, & Cloud Strategies Conference 2025
Head of GTM Patrick Thomas to outline how an independent data layer solves today’s data sprawl and creates long-term AI agility
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on December 11, 2025 at 2:00 pmBackblaze, Inc., a high-performance cloud storage platform for the AI era, announced that Patrick Thomas, head of go-to-market, participates to the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations, & Cloud Strategies Conference 2025 (Gartner IOCS), taking place December 9-11 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Thomas’s session will give infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders a strategic playbook for building an independent data layer to overcome data sprawl, optimize storage economics, and create the flexible foundation required for AI and multi-cloud initiatives.
The presentation will address a central challenge facing I&O leaders: decades of accumulated data sprawl and fragmented infrastructure-often marked by vendor lock-in and unpredictable egress fees-are major blockers to delivering AI-driven workloads such as retrieval augmented gen (RAG), inference, analytics, and multi-cloud compute. Thomas will outline how adopting an independent, vendor-neutral, S3-compatible data layer enables organizations to consolidate storage, unlock data mobility, and eliminate cost barriers that impede innovation.
Thomas will also highlight real-world examples of how organizations, including Big Cartel, Decart, urlscan.io, and a Fortune 100 media company, have modernized their architectures with independent cloud storage. Several of these organizations achieved reductions of up to 80% in storage costs while improving performance and unlocking new AI and data-intensive workflows.
“Infrastructure and operations teams are under pressure to deliver both innovation and reliability,” said Thomas. “Backblaze exists to make those teams unstoppable-solving their toughest storage challenges with the performance, transparency, and trust they need to move faster. Gartner IOCS is where those conversations happen, and we’re excited to be part of it.”
Session Details
- Title: Backblaze: The Business Case for an Independent Data Layer – Future-Proof for AI
- Speaker: Patrick Thomas, Head of GTM
- Date/Time/Location: Thursday, December 11, 2025 | 9:50–10:10 AM PST, Gartner IOCS Theater Session
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