Asigra Inc., a leading cloud backup, recovery, and restore software provider announced cloud-to-cloud backup support for Google Apps. With this new capability, Asigra now supports multiple Tier One cloud applications and platforms, including Salesforce, IBM SmartCloud, Google Apps and others. Now included in Asigra Cloud Backup version 12.2, this new functionality ensures data recovery while ending the requirement for multiple application/platform centric backup solutions to protect physical, virtual, cloud and mobile computing platforms.

Organizations using Google Apps for business operations are enjoying the benefits that a move to a SaaS-based application presents. However, even as companies transfer their capital expenditure and IT management tasks to Google, they are ultimately responsible for the data stored in these environments.

Though Google performs its own backups to ensure that user data is kept available at all times, they are not responsible for helping you retrieve deleted, edited, or corrupted information. To help users reclaim control of data in this environment, Asigra announced cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery for Salesforce in November 2012 and now expanded capabilities to support Google Apps. With Asigra Cloud Backup, users now have the ability to protect Google Apps data just like any other enterprise data within their IT environment.

"There were 50 million business people provisioned in whole or part with office systems capabilities from the cloud at the start of 2013. Those 50 million are only 8% of the overall universe of office system users. The number of cloud-provisioned users will grow 28.5% a year to 695 million users by 2022 (and constitute 60% of the larger user universe that will exist by then). We're expecting cloud-provisioned users to constitute 33% of the enterprise universe in 2017," said Tom Austin, Senior Analyst, Gartner. A major acceleration toward cloud office systems (including email) will begin by 1H15, with "early majority" adopters migrating in earnest and "late majority" adopters beginning this move by 2017."

With Asigra Cloud Backup v12.2, users can protect Google Apps data at all times automatically. The latest advancement allows companies to backup and restore all important business information in Google Apps, including emails, calendars, contacts, documents, and sites. Users can automate and schedule the backup activities for the data in Google Apps, select the number of generations of the information that need protection, set retention rules and even decide different backup frequencies for different sets of data. Given that all Google Apps backup data is stored in the same single repository as all other corporate information, users no longer have silos of information lying outside of corporate control.

Organizations protecting Google Apps data with Asigra can backup or restore at the entire domain level, the account level or drill down to individual files or emails and restore them as they were at a point in time. This feature can be particularly useful when dealing with information created by employees who are no longer with the organization.

Advanced capabilities for protecting Google Apps include:

• Protection of Google Apps-based data within the user's overall end-to-end backup infrastructure.
• Ability to restore data back into Google Apps.
• Granular backup of data – at the domain level, account level or specific files or emails.
• Secure NIST FIPS 140-2 certified storage of backup data.
• Peace of mind through automation of the backup process.

According to a recent Aberdeen Group survey of IT professionals, "IT Business Preparedness: A Combination of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery", 51% of the respondents use or have plans to use Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) in support of their business continuity and disaster recovery programs. Organizations often rely on SaaS vendors to back up their information. This is a very risky practice. Companies need to protect their mission critical files themselves, by utilizing technology that protects their SaaS data.

"Google Apps is one of the fastest growing segments in the SaaS application arena. The current installed base includes a vast number of enterprises that will require a change in their backup architecture if they are to accommodate this data," said Tracy Staniland, VP, Marketing, Asigra. "As an innovator in the area of cloud-based data recovery we have extended our platform to Google Apps, providing our customers with the ultimate solution for physical, virtual, mobile and cloud-based data protection."

Pricing and Availability

Asigra Cloud Backup v12.2 with support for Google Apps is available immediately. There are no additional license fees for Google Apps or Salesforce.com backup and recovery functionality within the Asigra software platform.

To learn more about Asigra, visit www.asigra.com