Backup data from SaaS applications is more than just an insurance policy. It’s a wealth of information that can give businesses a competitive edge, explains Joe Gaska, CEO of GRAX.
Backup data gets a bad reputation. The term alone suggests that it is not something that fulfills any great purpose but rather something that exists “just in case.†When companies store data from their applications for regulatory compliance or disaster recovery, these stockpiles of historical information often sit dormant. For many companies, it’s just not seen as valuable unless it’s for recovery purposes.
Businesses like these seem to be missing an important concept- backup data is a record of all business activity over time. It includes everything from customer and partner information to employee actions. In other words, it is a rich log of the company’s history that can and should be actively used to inform future decisions.
It’s time to reconsider how organizations think about and use backed-up data. By analyzing this historical data and integrating it with their larger data ecosystem, they can better prepare for and create opportunities. But to do this, they must first control access to their information.
Taking Back Backup
Increasingly, companies’ historical data is found in the cloud, or SaaS, applications, such as Salesforce. Industry analysts at Gartner predict that by 2023, 70% of all enterprise workloads will be deployed in cloud services, up from 40% in 2020. As businesses move more mission-critical workloads to the cloud, they need to rethink how they access and leverage the data being generated there.
It is important to note that SaaS applications were not developed to prioritize data backup or reuse. “With a SaaS application, there’s nothing on-premises. You have web access to it, but somebody else is hosting, running, managing, and optimizing it within an infrastructure shared with a bunch of other clients you don’t know,†says ESG senior analyst Christophe Bertrand. In fact, unbeknownst to many organizations, while SaaS vendors are responsible for keeping their apps up and running, they typically don’t backup their customers’ data. This means not only is this critical data at risk of loss but there are also restrictions on how customers can access it in the apps.
Most often, companies use APIs to get access to their SaaS app data. However, this can cause problems as vendors place limits on the number of API calls a client can make before automatically locking them out of their data or charging overage fees. APIs also require significant time and resource investments for a company’s IT team to maintain. These restrictions will only become more disruptive to data reuse as companies generate more and more data in their SaaS apps.
Companies need to take back control of their historical SaaS app data by reclaiming ownership of it. They can do this by backing up and storing this data in their own secure cloud environment, such as AWS. Not only does this help ensure the data is protected, it also ensures it is easily and cost-effectively accessible for reuse.
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Prioritizing Data Reuse
Once a company owns its historical data, employees can easily reuse it for purposes outside of the SaaS applications. Ownership allows companies to stream data from their own cloud data lake into other analytic and operational tools such as Tableau, Snowflake, Amazon AWS Redshift, QuickSight, and SageMaker, Microsoft Azure Power BI and Analysis Services, and others.
With these tools, historical SaaS app data can be transformed into actionable knowledge to recognize and predict patterns that lead to better decision-making. For instance, it can train AI and ML algorithms to help businesses react in real-time and stay ahead of trends. It can also be used to provide insights into customer behavior and preferences so businesses can offer personalized services. By building strong customer relationships based on meeting individual needs, companies can upsell and cross-sell more effectively.
Historical data can be the differentiator in competitive markets. According to a McKinsey studyOpens a new window , high-performing companies are 57% more likely than their peers to use data to inform their long-term strategy. With the benefits that historical data offers, companies can better serve their customers and prepare for the future, which translates to increasing their bottom line.
Rethinking Historical SaaS Data
Companies must reassess their perspective on SaaS data backup. Rather than an insurance policy that collects dust, this data is a rich history that can be leveraged across an entire business once it is easily accessible and actionable. In order to become truly data-driven and gain a much-needed competitive edge, organizations need to own this business-critical data.Â
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