Google Workspace backups critical to business continuity

In October 2020, Google announced the new Google Workspace platform.  It is a step forward in workforce collaboration and empowering remote employees with the tools needed for business-productivity since the onset of the global pandemic.  Google has introduced several new features and capabilities as part of the evolution of their cloud SaaS platform.  

Despite the new collaboration features and capabilities found in the solution, protecting your data using adequate backups is still required.  Google Workspace backup is an essential component of ensuring business-continuity while taking advantage of the newest Google cloud SaaS platform.  

While backing up data in cloud SaaS environments has always been a critical task that organizations by necessity should care for, backups of cloud SaaS environments are more important than ever before.  Why can we say that?  Quite simply, organizations are using cloud SaaS environments such as Google Workspace more than ever before.  Organizations are storing more data in the cloud and using more cloud services. 

With the onset of the global pandemic early in 2020, businesses that may have been delaying cloud migrations were quickly facing the need to accelerate these rapidly.  With the shift to working from home mandates and widespread lockdowns, organizations had to empower remote employees with the tools and capabilities needed to remain productive and collaborate with fellow teammates.  

Cloud SaaS environments like Google G Suite (now Google Workspace) were extremely appealing offerings since they have built-in collaboration features readily available.  Also, cloud SaaS environments provide an easy solution to complex network connectivity challenges typical for remote employees connected to resources on-premises.

The net result is cloud-based SaaS environments are growing by leaps and bounds.  One report noted that cloud spending rose 37% to $29 billion during the first quarter of 2020.  The third-quarter 2020 revenue for Amazon Web Services grew by 29% year over year to $11.60 billion.

     

Companies are building their portfolio of tools to move forward with a solid digital workspace to continue empowering end-users for business-productivity.  Post COVID-19, the world, and especially the business world, will never be the same.  Google G Suite's evolution to Google Workspace has embraced the need for better collaboration, connectivity, and integration.  

The official Google Cloud blog announcing Google Workspace summed up the new cloud SaaS service this way:

How is Google Workspace fundamentally different?  One of the observations you will make with Google Workspace is you will notice many of the same core tools and services.  These include Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and others.  The key with the rebranding of the Google Workspace cloud SaaS service is not necessarily the services themselves but the integrations between them.

Google has worked to make the interaction and integration between the core Google services seamless and in a way that boosts productivity. Let's discuss a few examples.

1. With Google Workspace Chat sessions, business users can connect with customers, partners, and teammates to create Drive documents during the chat session.  This makes interaction and collaboration seamless without the need to switch between Google app services.

 

New integration between Google Chat and Google Drive documents

2. When you are in Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you can now preview linked files without the need to open up a new tab.  Additionally, when someone @mention someone in a document, a smart chip shows the contact details.  It works even for those that are outside the organization.  It will even suggest the next actions such as connecting via email, chat, or video conference.  

3. A new feature allowing a Meet picture-in-picture to be displayed in Gmail and Chat will be made available in the coming months in Google Workspace.  It will be a great tool when collaborating on a document or other digital media to have effective interactions with customers and teammates.

Google Workspace is the most capable and fluid cloud SaaS offering from Google to date. It allows businesses to have powerful tools at their disposal to carry on communication, collaboration, and business-productivity with a continued shift to a remote workforce.  

The new uptick in cloud adoption, cloud SaaS migrations and the need to empower the remote workforce means that data living in the cloud is here to stay.  Google Workspace is an excellent evolution of Google G Suite that meets the demands for even better integration between cloud SaaS applications.  

Remote productivity can no longer be "good enough." Businesses expect the experience to be nearly as productive, if not more so, than in-person communication and collaboration.  Google Workspace integrations between the core Google apps and services show the real strengths of cloud SaaS technologies.

The tremendous integration between Google core services means that more data will be generated and stored in the Google Workspace environment.  Business users will undoubtedly even begin to use services they may not have used before the newly integrated experience.

Even with the newly integrated services, Google does not offer a proper enterprise-class backup solution in Google Workspace.  Google is continuing to move forward with file versioning as part of the Google Drive experience.  Additionally, some businesses may attempt to use Google Vault as a type of make-shift backup solution.  However, this is not its intended purpose.  

Not the Google Workspace Admin Help page found here:

Vault is an information governance and eDiscovery tool for Google Workspace. With Vault, you can retain, hold, search, and export users' Google Workspace data. You can use Vault for the following data:

⦁ Gmail messages

⦁ Classic Hangouts messages (history turned on)                  

There is no mention of Google Vault being a backup solution.  Google Takeout allows exporting a copy of your data for use later.  Again, this is meant as a type of archive and not a proper backup solution.  After exporting data from Gmail services, users and admins alike often struggle with questions such as "how to open mbox file in gmail?" 

 

There are no native tools in the Google Workspace offering that constitutes proper backup of your business-critical data.  A third-party solution is needed to ensure that data in Google Workspace is backed up properly and your business-critical data is protected.  

Using a third-party backup solution to ensure your Google Workspace data is safe is critical to ensuring business continuity while cloud SaaS reliance and usage continues to grow.  SpinOne is a Google Workspace Backup solution that provides true enterprise backups for your Google Workspace environment with all the features and capabilities you would expect.  What types of features do SpinOne data backups include?

⦁ Automated, versioned backups – 1-3x daily – SpinOne provides automatic backup scheduling, so you don't have to worry about backing up your environment manually.  

⦁ Incremental backups for efficient protection – After the first full data backup, SpinOne uses efficient incremental backup technology to ensure the data copied and backup windows are as efficient as possible

⦁ Ability to store backups in the cloud of your choice – SpinOne provides the most diverse offering among its competitors.  You can choose to store your Google Workspace backups in Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Blob Storage

⦁ Encrypted backups – Backups are effectively encrypted to ensure your data is safe.

⦁ 100% guaranteed data recovery capabilities – You don't have to worry about restoring your backups.  SpinOne provides 100% guaranteed recovery.

⦁ Searchable backups – If you are not sure where a specific file may be located, SpinOne provides an easy way to search for particular data to recover

⦁ Granular file recovery – Recover only the data that needs to be recovered

⦁ Data migration between Google Workspace accounts – SpinOne allows migrating data between Google Workspace accounts.  It provides an effective means to offboard employees and maintain a lean Google Workspace user subscription count.

To learn more about how SpinOne can help secure and protect your Google Workspace data, try out a fully-featured trial subscription of SpinOne for your Google Workspace environment here.  

  

 

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