Backupify, which started out as a consumer-oriented cloud backup service, is getting more serious — and formal — about being a business backup provider.
That’s why it’s launching an enterprise support program which boosts the daily automated backups from once to three times a day and enables one account to support multiple Google Apps subdomains. One reason is the traction it sees Google Apps getting in corporate accounts, said Backupify CEO Rob May. Backupify, as its name suggests, backs up data from Google Apps, Salesforce.com, and social networking sites. It competes with services like Cloud Ally and Spanning.
A new service level agreement (SLA) will cover not only service uptime guarantees but assure customers that their backup will be completed within a day 99.9 percent of the time, he said. And, at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event next week, the company will launch Backupify for Salesforce on AppExchange
“People still think of us as consumer centric because that’s where we started in 2009 but we’ve been selling more to larger enterprises — companies like Jawbone, The Financial Times, Berklee College of Music and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Our product needed to be modified to take advantage of that,” May said in an interview.
May will outline the enterprise program in a post to the company blog later Friday. As part of that blog, he will outline a roadmap of planned new features for business users that will include centralized management for Google Apps and Salesforce.com and auditing of admin activities.
Google Apps and Salesforce shops need backup as much as anyone, he said. “When companies move from on-premises to cloud, it’s not like Google’s going to lose your data from a crash, but Mary in accounting might delete a document. You have to be concerned about collaboration and shared documents. If someone wipes out the document entirely or it gets hacked, you need backup,” May said, citing the recent hoopla over Mat Honen’s nightmare when hackers got hold of his Gmail account.
Cambridge, Mass.-based Backupify, with about 30 employees, has netted about $ 19.5 million in venture capital. A $ 9 million Series C round in July included money from new investor Symantec combined with more investment from existing backers Avalon Ventures, General Catalyst and Lowercase Capital.
Russell Greenwald, practice manager for Insource Services, a Boston system integrator, has recommended Backupify to clients using Google Apps for years. Sure, folks could put their own documents separately on Google Drive but that’s not optimal. “My mantra is ‘trust no one.’ Don’t store Google stuff on Google,” Greenwald said.
