Gobbler Woes - Customers Locked Out Of Data

July 18, 2016 Mike Thornton

Gobbler customers currently have no access to their backups caused by a dispute between Gobbler and their storage provider. Gobbler have quickly sourced a new storage provider and were in the process of migrating customers backups across when their previous storage provider, believed to be Amazon AWS decided to block access to Gobbler customer data.

Gobbler Marketplace Not Affected

We understand that this issue has NOT had any impact on Gobbler's new Marketplace service which is proving very popular with a number of software developers including Slate Digital and Exponential Audio.

It is not clear exactly when the lockout occurred but we have been assured that Gobbler have been working behind the scenes to resolve the potential data loss.

Our Advice For Gobbler Collaboration And Backup Customers

Our advice following this incident and the decision by Copy to suspend their backup service is not to depend on just one cloud based storage provider.

Announcement From Gobbler CEO Chris Kantrowitz

Reliable information has been hard to come by but Gobbler CEO Chris Kantrowitz did release this announcement on 28th June 2016...

This week has been one of the most painful weeks in the entire history of Gobbler. As many of you know we have been reliably backing up your work for 6 years. Though last week due to a dispute with our storage provider, we were locked out of our access to your data (and continue to be). A few months ago we received a bill from our provider for 5x our normal amount. We immediately contacted our provider to let them know of the exceptionally high bill. To us it was very clear that there was an error as we have been customers of theirs since the beginning of the company. Unfortunately our provider was not willing to work with us in adjusting this bill. We were in no position to pay this sum as we are a small growing company and this was way out of our hosting budget. As a show of good faith we made an offer which would put us on a repayment plan. We had been waiting for a few months to hear back only to instead find ourselves locked out of our account. At first we thought this was a temporary glitch with them as we were not informed that our access was going to be revoked. As many of you also know Gobbler takes data security and uptime very seriously. To this end we recently have been engaging in an upgrade to our service moving to a new storage provider. This project was only about 80% complete the day that our access was revoked, but it did allow us to get Gobbler back up and running in short order. Unfortunately we had not yet moved your data over. We had an offline plan due to the sheer amount of data you have entrusted with us over our 6 years working together. Which was slated to begin after the July 4th holiday, along with the completion of our upgrade. As it now stands the data we had linked to in our systems still resides with our old provider, and we are unable to access it. We are hopeful we can still work out a deal with them, and at the moment the ball is in their court. Gobbler is a company which has been built by music makers and lovers to connect people like us together, which has given us the amazing network of people like you. Our collective data is the lifeblood of what brought us together and every person here at Gobbler has been affected by losing access to their projects. Thankfully, our new partner Microsoft has signed a long term agreement with us which will prevent a business dispute from ever coming between you and your data ever again. This has been a painful, horrifying and embarrassing experience and we know we must rebuild our trust with you. We are still attempting to come to an agreement with our ex-provider, but they are not looking like they will budge. Over the coming months we’ll be making massive improvements aimed at making the user experience better than ever. We are forever thankful for your loyalty and hope we can continue to work together to create beautiful music. I want to personally apologize to you for the frustration. We’ll be in touch as soon as we have more to share. Please believe in us.

Chris Kantrowitz Gobbler CEO

Microsoft Announcement

As Chris explains in his letter to Gobbler costumers they have turned to Microsoft as their new storage provider and Microsoft have released this announcement.

Disappointing

It is somewhat disappointing that there has not been any further official update from Gobbler since this announcement over 2 weeks ago. We understand that Gobbler has sent out an email to customers that had used their collaboration service in the last 60 days, but those of us using Gobbler 2 as a cloud backup service and who haven't used it for longer than 60 days haven't been kept informed.

Normal Service Resumed? Perhaps Not Yet.

Although we understand that Gobbler v2 collaboration is back up and running we have seen reports that it isn't working completely smoothly yet, but this maybe teething trouble getting everything to work with their new storage providers. However, this is speculation as we have no more up to date information from Gobbler.

Observations

Although this may seem like a catastrophic data loss, in theory no one should have lost any data through this pricing dispute between Gobbler and Amazon AWS. The backup mantra is that "it is not backed up unless it is in three places, one of which is off site". So even if the offsite backup is lost, as maybe the case with Gobbler's customers, your data should be in at least two other places. If you aren't in this place, even if you are not a Gobbler customer, then please do take heed of this strange set of circumstances and revisit your storage and backup strategies so you don't fall foul of either a hard drive or cloud storage failure.

Let's Keep This In Perspective

Please don't over react as a result of this story, we have already seen comments from people saying that "this is the reason they don't use cloud storage because it is not secure", or "they will never use Gobbler again". Please remember that the circumstances Gobbler found themselves in were due to a business dispute over an unexpected an unexpected increase in price. It was NOT as a result of equipment or systems failure.

Perhaps the only criticism one could offer is that Gobbler put all their eggs in one basket, by depending on one cloud storage provider. Perhaps they should spread the risk but having multiple cloud storage providers, as we as users are advised to have content backed up in three places?

How About You?

If you are Gobbler Collaboration user, have you been affected? Have you lost data stored in the cloud on your Gobbler account? Have you had an email from Gobbler? If so then please do share your experiences....

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