Enterprise Cloud Backup of Cloud-Based Applications/Platforms

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1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Enterprise Cloud Backup of Cloud-Based Applications/Platforms

2 Gartner predicts that more than 50% of enterprises will have some form of SaaS-based application strategy by As enterprises embrace new cloud-centric computing models such as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), more and more of your corporate data resides in the cloud instead of the secure confines of your data center. Most enterprises are already spending a lot of time investing in processes, methodologies and technologies for protecting data and applications within your organization, but have given little thought to developing strategies to backup the data that resides in cloud-based platforms. Even though this data is outside your control, you are still held responsible for safeguarding it, from both a compliance and business operations perspective. If the data in these platforms is lost or damaged, you are risking your competitive advantage, intellectual property and reputation, and even worse, putting your company at risk for regulatory action or costly litigation. Imagine if your data residing within a cloud-based application such as Salesforce.com was inaccessible for an entire day would this cripple your business? What if through user error you lost critical customer data residing in your cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system and were not able to recover it because you did not have your own backup? What impact would this have on your business? What if you made some changes to your data that are no longer valid and you need to revert to a previous point-in-time version? How would you go about doing it? When the unthinkable happens will you be prepared? If you are running your business data or applications in a PaaS or SaaS platform, and would like to ensure that your data is always available when you need it, Asigra can help. Introduction Organizations are increasingly embracing new cloudbased computing models because they provide greater flexibility, cost effectiveness and faster time to market, but this means critical business data and applications now reside in cloud-based SaaS and PaaS platforms. This means your corporate data is no longer within the secure confines of the corporate data center and within your control. Many of your SaaS and PaaS-based applications are critical to the daily operations of your business. These encompass customer relationship management suites, business productivity applications and line of business applications. If data residing in these applications is lost or damaged, it can seriously affect your business operations and may lead to the loss of competitive advantage and intellectual property. It may even leave your organization in a state of regulatory non-compliance leading to huge remediation costs, loss of reputation and potential litigation.

3 According to Gartner Temporary loss of data, or a data breach that occurs within the cloud, can potentially expose the enterprise to serious legal and regulatory liability. The enterprise, not the cloud provider, is ultimately accountable, and must take steps to limit its exposure if these events should occur. Businesses don t think about protecting their data and applications that run in these clouds the same way as they protect the data housed in their own data center, a lapse that is putting mission-critical business information at risk. Most companies assume the SaaS or PaaS platform provider will ensure the availability of their data and applications at all times, even though it s ultimately their own responsibility to protect all corporate data. Remember: the responsibility of any data loss residing in these platforms will be born by you and your business. With the responsibility of protecting your customers data solely on your shoulders, shouldn t you be doing more to take charge of protecting your data residing in SaaS and PaaS platforms? Why businesses cannot rely on cloud platform providers for backup PaaS and SaaS platform providers do perform their own data backups. Most do so at regular intervals. Some perform a weekly backup to tape, while others run a daily backup job. However, as one of their customers, you do not control of either the frequency or granularity of the data protection that is performed. You also do not have any input as to the number of generations of information they backup, the retention rules, or the ability to schedule the backup at various intervals. Most platform providers will explicitly advise you to perform your own data backups and do not take on the obligation for the backup or restore of organizational data. This information is often buried within the fine print of your contract with the service provider, which may not guarantee the ability for their customers to recover data in the event of a loss. If they do offer this service, they may charge an additional fee to restore the data to a previous point-in-time copy. This information is often buried in the fine print of the contract; you may not even be aware it exists yet your acceptance of the agreement holds you responsible for protecting that data. To address these concerns, you might already be performing weekly or biweekly backups of your missioncritical data residing in these platforms by exporting the data into easily downloadable file formats. However, this data is usually stored in unsecure and unencrypted files on local machines. You also face the challenge of maintaining various versions of the backups over time, and the restoration of the data from these ad-hoc backups is usually time-consuming and difficult.

4 According to IDC, by 2015, about 24% of all new business software purchases will be of service-enabled software with SaaS delivery being 13.1% of worldwide software spending. The Asigra Solution Asigra Cloud Backup allows you to backup data from SaaS and PaaS services and restore data back to those services simply and effectively in the same way you protect on-premise data. We provide enterprises with a single solution to backup, recover and restore all of the data residing on your servers, virtual machines, desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones and in cloud-based platforms, allowing you to take control of all of your data backup activities and ensure your data is available to you at all times. Figure 1: Asigra s Cloud-to-Cloud Data Protection

5 The Nine Benefits of Asigra Cloud Backup Asigra Cloud Backup offers a number of benefits to enterprises looking to safeguard their corporate data residing in SaaS and PaaS platforms: 1. It protects data housed in these platforms the same way as it protects on-premise data. 2. You need not invest in training staff on new point solutions or methodologies to backup and restore information in PaaS and SaaS platforms. 3. It enables backup administrators to easily configure, manage and schedule all backup activities from a single, intuitive interface. 4. It manages the various generations of data that is backed up so administrators no longer have to maintain the various versions of backup files downloaded from PaaS and SaaS platforms manually. 5. Data is stored in deduplicated, compressed and encrypted formats and cannot be accessed or distributed by unauthorized users. 6. Asigra s encryption module is certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to be compliant with the FIPS standards. 7. You can set and achieve recovery time and recovery point objectives for data in PaaS and SaaS platforms just as you would for any other data in your organization with a simple and fast restore process. 8. This is no need to install special agents for backing up each and every PaaS or SaaS platform, enterprise software solution, or virtual machine platform. 9. There are no additional licensing fees for backing up the information in PaaS and SaaS platforms. Complimentary Cloud-to-Cloud Data Protection Asigra gives you the ability to protect all of your data, regardless of where it resides in the organization, using a single enterprise-class platform. Using the complimentary Enterprise Cloud-to-Cloud features that come packaged with the platform, you can leverage the flexibility, simplicity and automation of the software to achieve granular and highly recoverable backups of your data in PaaS and SaaS platforms.

6 If you have data residing in PaaS or SaaS clouds and do not have a cloud backup solution call us today at or for more information on Asigra Cloud Backup visit /product. About Asigra Cloud Backup Award-winning Asigra Cloud Backup is an agentless hardware and software platform agnostic cloud backup, recovery and restore software solution that supports servers, virtual machines, desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, cloud-based applications, enterprise applications and databases enabling organizations to resume business operations quickly while reducing costs and achieving peace of mind. About Asigra Asigra is the leading cloud computing software vendor focused on backup, recovery and restoration with more than 550,000 global installations. Asigra Cloud Backup transforms the way businesses manage and protect their data by delivering seamless end-to-end data protection that efficiently scales and easily adapts to any IT environment. With more than 26 years of experience as backup/recovery pioneers, Asigra manages one of the largest business-class backup service provider ecosystems in the world who power their cloud backup services using Asigra technology and provide hands-on local service. Asigra Cloud Backup was recently awarded the 2012 Frost & Sullivan North American New Product Innovation Award in Cloud Based Data Management and was named Product of the Year by Storage Magazine. Asigra was recently awarded a 5-Star rating in the CRN Magazine s 2012 Partner Program Guide, named a CRN 2012 Channel Chief, and also named a Best Channel Partner for 2012 by Business Solutions Magazine. Asigra is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with offices globally. For more information, visit 2012 Asigra, the Asigra logo and Asigra Cloud Backup are trademarks of Asigra Inc. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.