Mar
14, 2014
Cambridge's
Backupify expands as more companies focus on the cloud
Taryn
Plumb, Special to the Journal
Companies
today are becoming ever more dependent on cloud applications. But
there's an unexpected danger in that fact: Whether by accident or
through malicious intent, if data is deleted, how can it be
recovered?
The
possibility of that potentially devastating dilemma prompted the
creation of Backupify, a Cambridge-based cloud-to-cloud backup
services company. Founded in 2009, the company offers backup for
Google Apps, Salesforce and social media.
“A
lot of organizations are putting a lot of data in the cloud,” said
Rachel
Dines,
a senior analyst at Forrester
Research who
has a focus on IT continuity and resiliency. “They need to be able
to protect that data. The challenge right now is more awareness of
what software as a service providers will or will not do. We're at
the early stages of awareness.”
Backupify,
which employs 60 and recently doubled its office space in a new
Central Square location, had just anecdotal evidence that cloud
backup (or lack thereof) was an issue, according to CEO Rob
May.
But today, the company restores one file every three seconds, he
said, and in total, recovered 12.8 million files in 2013.
It
now has 850,000 active user accounts at more than 7,000 companies.
“The
problem is not well identified,” said May. “The cloud is very
new. It's good risk-management not to have your eggs in one basket.”
Backupify
specifically works with two of the biggest cloud providers,
Salesforce and Google Apps; once activated, the company's application
queries for or identifies recently added or updated files, then
duplicates and copies them so that they're available on its web
interface. The process repeats every 24 hours. Pricing ranges from $3
a month, to $990 a month or domain.
Eventually,
the company plans to release backup services for Box, Smartsheet and
PipelineDeals, among others, May said. He declined to release revenue
figures.
As
he pointed out, not only do companies use the service for recovery
purposes, but for archiving and compliance. “There will come a time
when your Salesforce records, or G-chat records, will be subpoenaed,”
he said.
Still,
recovery remains the biggest concern, according to Dines. Data can be
lost a number of ways, including accidental deletion (the most
common), migration errors, malicious insiders, rogue applications,
departing employees, and hacking. And while most of the big software
as a service providers have effective processes in place to protect
their own internal data, companies can't take for granted that
they'll do the same for their customers. If data is deleted and it
isn't the provider's fault, they may charge an “exorbitant” fee
to help retrieve it, or simply say “tough luck,” Dines said.
Therefore,
she advised, companies of all sizes need to make themselves fully
aware of their provider's policies on backup and recovery, and take
steps to protect their data through cloud-to-cloud backup services,
which she expects will proliferate as more and more information moves
into the cloud.
“It’s
not just a best practice — it’s a fiduciary responsibility,”
Dines wrote in a report released in February. “If you don’t back
up your data, customers, partners, and employees consider you
negligent and incompetent. Yet, every day, enterprises send critical
data to providers without any plan for how they will back up the data
and restore it. Only when they experience data loss do they ask the
question, 'Who is responsible for backing up my data?'”
Backupify
has received a total of $19.5 million in funding from First Round
Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Avalon Ventures, Lowercase
Capital and Symantec.
Original story link.
© 2014 American City Business Journals
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