Snapshot: Backupify
How does Backupify work?
Backupify is a cloud-to-cloud backup provider that helps companies extend their IT best practices to the cloud by offering backup and recovery solutions for software as a service (SaaS). With Backupify, IT departments maintain control over vital company data by providing a secure second copy that’s always available on demand.
Daily automated backups let companies easily restore lost or overwritten data from SaaS platforms, such as Salesforce.com and Google Apps, as well as quickly and easily export important data for compliance or data accessibility reasons.
We offer three different products: Backupify for Google Apps, Backupify for Salesforce and Backupify for Personal Apps. Backupify also offers several free tools. For example, our FreeSpace tool allows users to reduce the size of their domain’s Gmail accounts by identifying and offloading mail attachments.
A lot of our messaging around the brand focusses on education - education the market that data is not necessarily safe and secure in Saas applications
What kinds of companies can benefit from the service?
Any company that is storing data in the cloud will benefit from our service, especially companies that are using Google Apps and Salesforce.com. There is a misconception that when a company uses these cloud applications, their data is backed up and secure. Unfortunately these SaaS providers are not designed to protect data against user error, malicious deletions and other forms of data loss.
At the moment we’re working with companies including the Financial Times, backing up their data, as well as educational institutions including the Fairport Central School District in New York State and the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Backupify is an independent, third-party cloud-to-cloud backup solution that can protect a company’s data in the cloud. Backupify’s customer base ranges from small to medium businesses.
How do you promote the Backupify brand online? Do you use social media?
We promote Backupify through both paid and inbound organic channels. A lot of our messaging around the brand focuses on education—educating the market that data is not necessarily safe and secure in SaaS applications and a cloud-to-cloud backup is essential for companies storing lots of crucial data in the cloud.
A Backupify study conducted by IT community Spiceworks, Protecting Data in the Cloud: The Truth About SaaS Backup, revealed that while 81 percent of IT professionals who use or plan to use SaaS applications feel that the data stored in them is “very important”, 52 percent of those professionals don’t back up or plan to back up data within them.
We use social channels including LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, Twitter and our blog to educate the market and also share interesting cloud stories, news about data protection, IT best practices, stats on cloud storage, Google Apps tips and more.
Does Backupify have any IP? What does it cover?
We have a patent filed on our one-click restore technology.
What are the main challenges you face when protecting the Backupify brand and service?
The logo is our biggest challenge. Several companies have come up with eerily similar logos.
Do you have any concerns about protecting Backupify’s IP or the IP of third parties?
Not really. I think software patents should be banned as they aren’t very relevant. We don’t worry much about patents.
Would it be easy to copy your business model? Have you encountered any Backupify imitators?
We have lots of imitators but it isn’t very easy to copy effectively. Data backup businesses benefit from economies of scale and we have more customers and more data than everyone else in this space so our business model is better—we have a much lower cost structure.
