If your organization uses software as a service, or SaaS workloads,
there are a few key issues you should consider before buying a SaaS backup solution to help protect your data.
So many organizations today rely on SaaS applications.
That might be something like Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, Google Workspace, Salesforce and many, many others.
But the data protection capabilities built into your SaaS platform might not fully meet your business requirements.
That's why so many organizations choose to add third-party SaaS backup tools to help protect their data.
In fact, the major SaaS vendors recommend this.
For instance, the threats to your data can take the form of hardware failures.
They can include things like user errors.
They can include even worse mistakes like an admin error where an entire folder or a directory gets overwritten.
And, of course, today they can include national disasters.
And perhaps the worst threat today is the threat from malware, ransomware and other forms of cyberattack.
Because of this, the SaaS vendors themselves make specific recommendations.
In fact, the Microsoft license agreement for Microsoft 365 states, we recommend that you regularly back up your content and data using third-party apps and services.
Similarly, the Salesforce license agreement says a simple mistake in your source file or field mapping could spell disaster for your data.
It's recommended you keep a regular backup of your data and do a manual point in time backup before you proceed with any major data project.
So the SaaS vendors recommend it.
There are lots of reasons why your data is at risk.
So what are the capabilities that you need to properly protect it?
Well, let's look.
First, whatever SaaS backup platform you need-- you're using --it's important that it be tightly integrated with the SaaS application.
It's also really important that you have control over when the backups are taken.
In addition, you'd like a great deal of control over exactly what gets backed up each time.
You also want to control where the data will be saved.
And a big plus these days is the ability to have improved compliance and security beyond that provided by your SaaS vendor.
So let's look at these points one at a time.
The first point about integration is so key because the recovery point objectives, or RPOs, for your backup,
those require very tight integration between the SaaS platform and the SaaS backup software.
Then there are specific kinds of integration, depending on which SaaS workload you're using.
In the case of Salesforce, for instance, you want anonymized seating so that you can accelerate development and reduce costs.
Again, tight integration there.
In the case of Microsoft 365, that integration means being fully able to backup emails, calendars, shared folders, groups, teams exchange--at a very granular level.
The next point is when do these backups occur?
Normally, your SaaS platform will have scheduled backups that are limited in how often they occur.
With a SaaS backup platform, though, you have greater control: you can schedule them, have on demand backups, have them more frequently.
And one important capability, you can have automated backups that
happen whenever the SaaS backup software detects any kind of an anomaly or threat signature.
Next, what is it that gets backed up?
And this is really where the idea of granular control is so important.
You don't necessarily want to backup or restore from an entire directory.
You might not even want a single record.
You may want to be able to get down to the field level or metadata level and a full-function SaaS backup platform lets you do that.
So where is the data going to be stored?
Well, you have some choices here.
Let's say you've got your SaaS applications--got a whole bunch of them.
And now you've got some type of in the cloud SaaS backup solution.
The question is, where does the data get stored?
Well, one place you can store it is that these platforms have a built-in storage.
But the more flexible option is where you're given control of many different locations.
So, for instance, you might want to save this on AWS.
You might want to go to a Dropbox folder.
You might want to export this as an FTP.
You might want to put it in cloud object storage.
That's a great advantage because now you have control over that data.
You can replicate it to a third site.
And in addition to the data protection, you have greater business resilience, greater business continuity.
Then the final point here is compliance.
Because today, many of the SaaS platforms will allow you to do basic administration tasks.
But what you really want is to have fine-grained control that only comes from role-based access control, or RBAC as it's called.
In addition, security and compliance capabilities include detailed logging of every activity that takes place in your SaaS platform.
And why that's important is because it generates an audit trail and that allows you to prove that you've been compliant.
So when you bring all these capabilities together:
integration--when you back up and how often, what you back up, and how granularly, where you back up, and how easy it is to comply.
These are the capabilities that you want to look for in a SaaS backup platform.
Thank you.
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