Backupify — the company that backs up cloud data so that businesses and IT departments can keep control of their stuff — is about to launch a new tool called Snapshot for Google Apps that will allow companies to download all the data in a Google Apps account into a single ZIP file and with a single click.
This is especially helpful when a company has an employee who has left the company, but it can also be used to merge data from one Google Apps account into another account and to migrate data out of Google Apps into another system, such as Microsoft Exchange.
Backupify CEO Rob May said, “At our core, Backupify is a data liberation company. We want to help IT departments manage and control their data in the cloud, and Backupify Snapshot is another tool in that cloud data management toolkit.”
The main problem that Snapshot is trying to solve is that when a Google Apps user leaves the company, the IT department has three choices of what to do:
- Delete the account and erase the data
- Manually download all of the individual data items (messages, docs, contacts ,etc) and then delete the account
- Pay $50/year to keep the suspended account active and keep the data available
Backupify reported:
One company we recently spoke with currently has (and is paying for) 300 Google Apps accounts - 60 of which are inactive. At a cost of $50 per account per year, that’s $3000 they are paying for unused accounts, simply because there is no reasonable way to extract that data.
For companies that already use Backupify to backup their Google Apps data, they can request a full backup and bulk download of a single account that has already been backed up, but they have to wait for Backupify to handle the request. With Snapshot, which is available in the Google Apps Marketplace, Backupify is turning this into a self-serve process.
Companies that want to try Snapshot can get their first account download for free. After that, it costs $10 per download. Backupify is betting that most IT departments and small businesses will likely pay the 10 bucks to download the full download instead of paying $50 (each year) to keep the account alive.
An important thing to note about the ZIP file that Snapshot creates is that it contains backup files converted into the following usable formats:
- Gmail messages = Mbox
- Google Docs = Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint 2003
- Calendar = iCalendar
- Contacts = vCard
- Sites = Zipped HTML + included images and files
“We have heard time and time again from CIOs and IT managers that they want the same tools and workflows for their cloud applications that they had with their on premise software deployments,” said May. “Backupify Snapshot continues our commitment to make that a reality by automating a key part of the employee deprovisioning process for Google Apps administrators.”
Backupify Snapshot will launch as a public beta. The app is already available in Apps Marketplace and thesite is live. The official announcement will be coming soon.
Also read
- TechRepublic: Backupify unveils one-click restore for cloud apps
- TechRepublic: Backupify drops paywall; backs up your data from Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail
- Spanning adds Gmail to its Google Apps backup service; Courts businesses
- Backupify capitalizes on Gmail outage, then blows up
This was originally published on TechRepublic.
