Data Backup Digest

Businesses use all sort of applications during their day-to-day operations. While in the past nearly all of these programs would have been offline, with the data stored on hard drives, it’s not uncommon for a business application to operate within the cloud.

These services are entirely online and don’t necessarily come with desktop alternatives. There are, of course, benefits to applications like these. The first is that they’ll work across all sorts of systems, like differing operating systems or mobile devices. They’ll also be accessible from anywhere, without having to rely on whether the program is installed.

However, a difficulty arises because the data stored on these services isn’t truly within the hands of the business. The data is stored with that service and on their services. Although this reduces the amount of data the business has to store personally, which means less capacity is required and potentially reduced costs, it also makes backup less reliable.

While some of these big services, like Google Apps or Office 365, are unlikely to suddenly just go offline or to lose your data, there’s no point taking any risks. Disasters do happen and they can happen to any service. It is vitally important that you ensure every single bit of your data is backed up, no matter where it comes from or who stores it in the first place.

This is where a service like Spanning comes in. Spanning is a service that will back up the data stored by those system-as-a-service applications. At the moment it supports Google Apps, Office 365 and Salesforce – some of the three biggest business services around.

Each service is considered its own package by Spanning. Google Apps cost $40/user per year, Salesforce cost $47/user per year and Office 365 is currently in a user-testable beta.

This will mean that you get automated, secure daily and on-demand backups with unlimited storage, and granular recovery from any point in time. Google Apps allows for fully accurate restore of all metadata, error reports and admin options for user provisioning and management. Salesforce allows for in-app backup, monitoring and control of API usage, interactive Chatter notifications and a companion app for mobile.

Pricing discounts are available for education and non-profit organisations, for which Spanning advise that you contact them for further information.

Spanning is available for free trial before purchase, ensuring that you can test out the service and see whether it suits your needs. With over a million users you’ll be joining good company as it’s a well-respected service.

Spanning was recently acquired by EMC, a key player in the data protection market, ensuring that the company now has strong support. In a blog post, Spanning CEO Jeff Erramouspe said that the acquisition will allow them to achieve all of their business objectives quicker, along with being able to access a bigger custome rbase and provide stronger leverage to their existing customers.

For more information on Spanning, or to engage in a free trial, visit their official website (where you can also find additional resources such as videos, podcasts and webinars).