Backblaze, Inc. announced that Christoper (Chris) Opat has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Cloud Operations overseeing the strategy and operations of the Backblaze global cloud storage platform. With over 500,000 customers and three billion gigabytes of data storage under management, the company has build significant experience in more than 15 years in business. Opat expands the company's leadership by bringing his impressive cloud and infrastructure knowledge developed during his time leading cloud operations at companies like StackPath and Cloudreach.

In his role at Backblaze, Opat oversees cloud strategy, platform engineering, and technology infrastructure, enabling the company to further scale capacity and improve performance for all customers as well as providing for the growing pool of larger-sized customers' needs as the company continues to see as the company continues to see success in moving up-market. Opat brings more than 25 years of industry experience to Backblaze. Previously, he served as senior vice president leading platform engineering and operations at StackPath, a specialized provider in edge technology and content delivery.

He also held leadership roles at CyrusOne, CompuCom, Cloudreach, and Bear Stearns/JPMorgan. Chris earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Television and Digital Media Production from Ithaca College.