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Google Vault Backup Vs CloudAlly Amazon AWS Backup

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Google Vault Backup Vs CloudAlly Amazon AWS Backup

Being a readily available add-on for Google Apps, Google Vault could be a potentially good data protection and backup alternative. Google Vault Backup is necessary in any constellation.

But, does it provide a complete data protection solution with backup or recovery from any point?

And, how does it measure up against CloudAlly, which is a leading provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery services?

In this article, we take a look at the features offered by Google Vault and CloudAlly, along with their pros and cons.

The objective is to do a direct comparison of these services to understand which one is more suitable for the protection of Google Apps data.

Things to Look for in a Google Apps Data Protection Plan

To be able to compare CloudAlly and Google Vault, we first need to understand what should be considered when selecting a suitable data protection service or tool.

First of all, the service should be able to search the data and export any data that is required on site.

It should also be possible to restore individual items and to restore complete user accounts from any point in time.

Now, let us check out the details of the two popular backup services for Google Apps.

Google Vault Backup

Google Vault is a powerful add-on provided by Google that allows your enterprise to retain, search, store and export emails or chat messages for quick discovery and compliance requirements.

It collects all email correspondence that comes into and goes out of your company. It thus empowers your administrators to locate or search for any email item, whenever required.

For messages, it is possible to place a “hold” at the company level or account level.

For this purpose, your company administrators need to specify the keyword and date for the messages to be included under the “hold”.

The advantage of this is that you can retain the data until the “hold” period expires or until it is removed by the administrators.

While the “hold” is active, the end user cannot change or even delete the data covered under the “hold”. This type of “hold” is pretty useful for lawyers for litigation purposes.

How to Access the Vault Data?

Your company administrator needs to carry out a search to spot particular data items and export them. Once they are exported, the items can be downloaded in a compressed file to use with any email program or even text editor. 

Limitations

Google Vault Backup may be able to search your data or files on Google Drive, but it cannot retain them. So, if any of the Google Drive files is deleted accidentally, it will not be able to help you recover them.

In fact, it cannot offer a point-in-time recovery for any of the popular Google Apps, such as Calendars, Contacts, and Drive.

As mentioned earlier, the Vault can hold data at the account level, but the Vault data cannot be restored directly back to the account of the end user.

If any user (account) of Google Apps is deleted, all the corresponding data will be removed along with the removal of Vault. This is because the Vault repository is maintained within the Gmail account of a user.

Summary

It is important to note that Google Vault was only designed for e-discovery and compliance. It can thus only retrieve individual emails or chat messages and does not offer full-fledged backup and recovery functionality for all Google Apps.

You can avail this service at $5 per month ($60 per year) for each Vault user.

CloudAlly Secure Amazon AWS Backup

CloudAlly is a comprehensive backup and recovery service for all Google Apps data. It is a highly reliable, cloud-based data backup service.

Along with Google Apps, it also offers automated daily backups of Office 365, SharePoint/OneDrive for Business, Salesforce, Box for Business and more to an unlimited Amazon secure storage.

Your organization’s administrator can activate the backups for all Google Apps users (falling under one domain) or individual users with a single click.

Also, in the case of any data loss, restoration and data export is possible with a single click. You are thus able to quickly recover your Google Apps data from any point in time.

Backup

With CloudAlly, there is no limitation to the storage and it offers unlimited retention of daily archives. This allows for backups on a daily basis and helps to considerably reduce the on-premises storage requirements.

If that was not enough, CloudAlly also empowers you to control all your backups from a single management console.

This clearly saves a lot of time by getting rid of the admin processes that require too much manual effort.

With regard to the backups taken using CloudAlly, they continue to be available to you, even after any Google Apps user (account) is deleted.

They only cease to exist when the administrator removes them. It is, therefore, possible for your company to archive user backups for an indefinite amount of time by using the “backup pause” feature of CloudAlly.

Restore

When the need arises to restore any data at an individual item level or at any higher level (folder, mailbox and more), you can simply search your CloudAlly backups.

The restored data is generally stored with a date and time stamp in a sub-folder named “CloudAlly Restore”.

Unlike Google Vault, it is possible to restore the data directly to the user’s account. In fact, you can even restore it back to a different user account, if there is such a requirement.

Export

CloudAlly enables you to export data (which has been backed up) in various formats, including .vcf, .eml. Data can also be exported in .pst format, which is compatible with the commonly used email platform in enterprises, namely Outlook.

Data Security and Compliance

You can be sure about the adherence to data security and customer confidentiality best practices, as CloudAlly is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant and ISO 27001 certified.

CloudAlly takes care of data security laws to such an extent that you are given the choice to opt for servers based in the U.S. (by default), EU or Australia.

Summary

With the most comprehensive backup and recovery features on offer, CloudAlly proves itself to be a leading provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery services.

It is ideal for the protection of your Google Apps data with Gmail, Calendars, Tasks, Contacts, Chat and Google Drive!

You can avail the CloudAlly services at $3 per month ($30 per year) for every Google Apps user. What is more, you can even explore their services on a free trial basis for around 15 days.

If you have a non-profit or academic organization, you will even get special discounts from CloudAlly.

We hope that the above comparison of Google Vault Backup and CloudAlly enables you to make an informed decision when selecting your ideal Google Apps data protection tool.

3 Reasons to Stop by Booth #1607 at Microsoft WPC

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Microsoft WPC

Microsoft WPC, is so close, we can hardly wait! Are you going to be there? Here are 3 reasons to stop by our booth:

1. Meet CloudAlly team and learn all about CloudAlly backup for Office 365

Microsoft WPC will be your first chance to talk to us face-to-face about our awesome office 365 that include backup to email,contacts,calendar,and tasks. You can also find out about CloudAlly backup for  SharePoint/OneDrive.

2. Our Partner Programs for VARs, Resellers, ISVs, MSPs and more!

Are you one of the above? Stop by to meet Emilia Dariel, our Head of Marketing & Biz Dev and find out about exciting partnership opportunities. Want to set up a meeting? E-mail her at emilia@cloudally.com

3) Free Stuff (for your kids)!

Wanna skip the guilt-ridden, overpriced shopping for your kids at the airport this year? We know your kids are the #1 benefactors of conference swag, which is why this year we made stuff specifically for them. Stop by our booth #1607 to pick up for your son or daughter a SUPERPOWER swag (it’s a surprise)!

Hope to see you at Microsoft WPC 2015, July 12 – 16th at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. We’ll be at Booth # 1607 hanging out with a life-sized Superhero…

Going to be there? Contact support@cloudally.com to reserve your swag (they go fast!).

Read more about Office 365 backup, and checkout how Second Start Technologies prevented office 365 data loss.

7 Key Announcements Made at Microsoft Ignite 2015

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Microsoft Ignite

Last week, Microsoft organized its first Ignite conference in Chicago, Illinois with 23,000 attendees, Microsoft Ignite. The objective of Ignite was to replace the other professional conferences that Microsoft hosts such as TechEd, with one single event. Unlike Build 2015, which primarily catered to developers, Ignite aimed to help IT professionals deliver innovative technology.

Microsoft made several significant announcements in over 200 sessions.  We have complied for you, the top seven that will have the most impact in the technology industry.

SharePoint 2016

Microsoft promised to offer better support for embedded video, an intuitive admin portal, and improved people experience with Delve, Microsoft’s newest technology.

Storing files across devices with OneDrive, as a replacement of your organization’s file server is now available. You can also expect to witness improved reporting and auditing of changes to files.

New features like governance controls and personalized discovery experiences, strengthen enterprise search. You can also expect an improved user experience with more advanced collaboration and personalized insights.

One significant improvement was Zero Downtime Patching. This means updates that are critical to the operating system’s health will be pushed and delivered in one go, without affecting the end user.

Another improvement is the new Server Role Selection when configuring a new SharePoint Some other features revealed are:

  • SharePoint 2016 will support Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Hardware requirements for SharePoint 2015 will be same as SharePoint 2013
  • Support of non-default SMTP ports and SARTTTLS to encrypt connections
  • Standalone instructions will no longer be supported with SharePoint 2016
  • ODF support
  • Upgrade directly from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016

We expect there will be more updates or announcements about SharePoint 2016 between Q1 and Q2 of 2016.

Skype for Business

In April 2015, Microsoft launched Skype for Business, and at Ignite, they talked about modern meetings, an improved meeting feature that will help you collaborate easily with participants sitting in multiple locations. It was also announced that later in 2015, it would enable users to broadcast Skype for business meetings to up to 10,000 participants at a time.

Two new features were announced that are pre-loaded meeting attachments, which will speed up meeting start times, as it will show the meeting content automatically at the beginning of the call.

Another was in-call co-authoring. It will help initiate co-authoring sessions easily so that multiple participants can work or collaborate on a single document right from within the meeting itself while everyone sees the changes happening live.

Skype for Business will be available on iOS and Android, by fall 2015, and for Mac, by the end of 2015.

You can also expect some enterprise voice features such as call parking, call forwarding, audio conferencing, and PSTN calling by the end of 2015.

Office 2016 Public Preview

At Ignite, Microsoft released a preview of its much-awaited product, Office 2016. If you are an Office 365 user, you can use it for free, or you can test it out with a free trial.

Here is a quick glimpse of what Office 2016 is expected to bring in:

  • Ability to access documents anywhere, on any device
  •  Real-time co-authoring to the Windows Desktop application, starting with Word 2016
  • Smart applications such as Tell Me, Clutter, and Insights
  • Advanced modern charts and graphs such as Waterfall, TreeMap, and Sunburst
  •  Outlook Multi-factor authentication through integration with Active Directory Authentication
  • Library (ADAL)

You can find more details here and you can download the Office 2016 preview here.

Windows Update for Business

Windows 10 for Business has been a matter of discussion among IT pundits since it was announced last September, and at Ignite, Microsoft announced a new management option for Windows 10 – Windows Update for Business.

This will give better control to administrators, as it will allow them to decide which branch offices and PCs will receive which updates first. It will also help specify time frames for when these updates should be installed. The best part is that it will help deliver updates to remote sites and branch offices with

limited bandwidth, efficiently. Windows Update for Business is free for Windows Enterprise and Windows Pro, and Microsoft claims that it will offer better control of update deployment, reduce management expenses, and provide

quicker access to security updates. If you want to know more about Windows 10 for Business, visit the Microsoft Blog post, or join the Windows 10 Insider Program.

Office 365 Update

Microsoft announced several updates about Office 365, which showed how this 800-pound gorilla trying to improve information control and transparency within Office 365. Here are a couple of those updates.

  •  File-level encryption across email and content
  •  Office 365 groups will be integrated with Dynamics CRM, showing documents, conversations
  • Office 365 groups are now a part of Outlook 2016 Preview
  • New mobile apps will soon be launched for Office 365 groups
  • The Office 365 Microsites board is now organized by tags
  • A new knowledge portal on Office 365, named InfoPedia will be available soon
  • Office 365 video will have Yammer integration
  • Sway will be available later in May, to Office 365 first release customers
  • You can administer Office 365 groups using Powershell

OneDrive for Business

OneDrive for business has started becoming a favorite among enterprises these days, and at Ignite, Microsoft revealed their roadmap along with several other announcements of its upcoming features. Here is a quick rundown of what was disclosed:

  • You can now share OneDrive folders within your mobile app
  • Right-click context menu is now available
  • Features like version control, OWA attachments, and Yammer integration will soon be coming to OneDrive
  • Using reporting on Office 365, you can keep a check on which users are sharing what files on OneDrive

Microsoft also revealed its plans about OneDrive under the roadmap. Here is what you can expect:

  • OneDrive will come with new mobile PDF experience for Android and iOS in Q2, 2015
  • Next generation sync client will be introduced in Q3, 2015
  •  There will be a unified web UX in Q3, 2015
  • The 20,000 file limit will be removed from OneDrive in Q4, 2015

Advanced Threat Analytics

Microsoft tried addressing the security worries of enterprises with its new Advanced Threat Analytics or ATA, which is currently available under this preview. This technology is the result of Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Israeli security startup Aorato, and it helps improve security by going through four steps to ensure data protection:  analyze, learn, detect, and alert.

It will help you detect potentially harmful activity within your network by identifying suspicious devices and user activities. It will also enable you identify known malicious attacks such as Pass-the-Ticket, Reconnaissance, and known security issues such as weak protocols and broken trust certificates.

There were several other announcements made such as C# 6.0, ASP.NET 5.0, SQL Server 2016, Azure Stack, and the Operations Management Suite.

So, are you ready to test these upcoming features? The next Microsoft Ignite Conference will be held in Chicago between May 9 -13, 2016. But, you can expect more updates at Microsoft’s epic event Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) that will be held in Orlando, Florida on July 12 – 16, 2015.

CloudAlly will be attending, come meet us at our booth! More details soon, stay tuned!

 If you are interested in meeting us at Microsoft WPC let us know:  sales@cloudally.com

Why Backup Online Data - FREE overview

Download our FREE overview on data loss in the cloud: what causes it and what you MUST do to prevent it.

How to recover your G Suite?

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Lost and found part 2: How to recover your Gmail/Google Apps drive, contacts and calendar.

This is our 2nd article on how to recover lost online data on Gmail/Google Apps. On the 1st part of “Lost and found” we discussed recovering lost Gmail/Google app emails. In this second and last part we will explain how to recover lost online data in your Drive, lost contacts and deleted calendar events.

Let’s get to it!

As before – first ask your self: When did you delete it? If it hasn’t been that long (no more than 30 days) follow the next instructions.

How To Recover Gmail Contacts

Google has a built-in system that saves older versions of contacts for some time to help recover any contact data that is lost accidentally. Here is how you can use this feature to recover your Google contacts.

Step 1: Click on “Gmail” in the top left corner of the window, then select “Contacts” in the drop down menu that appears.

Step 2: On the Google Contacts page, click on the “More” button on the top left part of the screen, and select “Restore Contacts” from the dropdown menu.

 

Your recently deleted contact data should be restored under a new group with the current date as the title. However, Google deletes Contacts’ data as well after 30 days, so make sure you recover contacts sooner, rather than later.

How To Recover a Deleted Calendar Event

If you accidentally delete an event, you may not be able to recover all your details, but can retrieve some information through an XML feed.

Step 1: Click on the Undo option right on top that appears as soon as you delete an event. It stays there for a few moments so you need to be quick about it, otherwise, you’ll have to recreate the calendar event.

Step 2: If you missed undo link, look for any invitations you might have sent for that event in your Gmail’s Sent folder.

If you can’t find any invitations, you’ll have to recover the data the hard way. If you’re not well versed with Google Apps or aren’t an apps administrator, it would be better to simply recreate the event.

How To Find Calendar’s Public XML Feed

Step 1: Change your domain’s calendar sharing settings in the Google Admin console to Share all information, and outsiders cannot modify calendars.

Step 2: In the list on the left, click on the drop down option of your calendar, and select calendar settings.

Step 3: Scroll down until you see Private Address column with two sections, XML, and ICAL. Click on XML.

Step 4: You should see a popup with a URL on it. Click it.

Step 5: Once clicked, add the string “?showdeleted=true&showhidden=true” to the end of URL in your browser’s address bar. You should see an XML feed with all the event details in your calendar, including the ones you just deleted.

You can see limited information about your events such as a brief description and the event title, but the invited guests’ information isn’t recoverable though.

How To Recover Deleted Files from Google Drive

Step 1: Go to your Google Drive and click on the  Trash option on the left.

Step 2:  Once there, select the file you want to recover and click the “Restore” button.

Step 3: In case you can’t find the files there, go to the Google Admin console and navigate to the users section.

Step 4: Find the user in the list, and then go to their account page. Once there, click on the three vertical dots on the top left corner, then select “Restore Data” in the drop down menu.

Step 5: Select the date range for when you deleted the files, and check the box for Google Drive files, then click Restore. That should do it.

If you are a Google apps user, ask your admin to recover your data. Google Apps admins can recover data from the prior 25 days.

If you took all the actions above and still can’t find that lost Google App data (Drive, Contacts, Calendar)  you were looking for, then you must have deleted it over a month ago, and them you can’t recover it, since Google automatically erases it after 30 days.

If you are using CloudAlly, then you can easily recover your deleted data, even though it was permanently erased by Google:

 Recover your deleted email with CloudAlly

a. Log in to your account in CloudAlly dashboard

b. Go to the Google account you would like to restore and click on it

c. Search for the data type (email/drive/calendar/contacts)  and date you want to recover

d. Click on restore/export

c. Get your recovered data to your account or desktop

It’s really simple and easy to restore lost online with CloudAlly automated backups for Google Apps. Next time, if you are using CloudAlly, you can skip all those steps, log in to CloudAlly and recover your lost data. As simple as a click.

Read more on “How to backup Google Apps” Here.

 

Why Backup Online Data - FREE overview

Download our FREE overview on data loss in the cloud: what causes it and what you MUST do to prevent it.

3 Reasons You Should Add Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Service To Your Portfolio

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Backup Services for Office 365

Every business wants to satisfy its clients and win more customers. But the question is how? For most, quality service is necessary. But is that everything that can be offered? The competition is tough and you have to stay ahead. So, the key to success is to know your competition, use the findings to your competitive advantage, and offer rich value.  Backup services for office 365 are essential for your success.

You may be a reseller of Google Apps, Office 365, or Salesforce like your competitors, but have you ever thought of offering added -value services like cloud-to-cloud backup to your customers? If you hadn’t, you must be wondering now how it fits in. If you have, but didn’t add it yet, then you should have another thought about it. Let’s see how it can help you stay ahead of your competition:

Stand out from the crowd

The success lies not in what type of cloud services your company offers, but how the offering is unique as compared to others. It is very important that you have a Unique Selling Proposition that gives your customers enough reasons to come to you rather than look at the competition.  Any service becomes unique when it is bundled with unique products or services that prove to be valuable in the market and there is a need for it.

Cloud-to-cloud backup service is a good example of a unique offer that can work as a key differentiator between you and your competitors and make you stand out from the crowd. With a cloud-to-cloud backup service added to your list of services, you can be an “all in one place” service for your customers – for example, Google App/Salesforce/ Office 365 implementation/migration to management, support and 100% backup.

Whether it’s Google Apps, Office 365, or Salesforce,every product comes with a time-bound backup feature. You have the opportunity of adding a competitive edge to your company with offering automated secured daily backups like CloudAlly.  knowing the importance of backup to the business continuity of your customers will prove you are on top of your game, and will win you new customers.

Win Customer Trust

Winning customers’ trust is very important. If you offer a solution that appears to be a compelling one, but in fact it really isn’t, your credibility gets hurt and that leads to customer attrition. It’s not just losing one customer, but also losing the opportunity of referrals as well.

Let’s take the example of Google Apps. Google keeps any deleted data for only 30 days. Now, what if a customer deletes data accidentally and never realizes that it needs to be backed up within 30 days—what happens next? The data can never be recovered and Google can’t even help with that. Won’t your customer get frustrated in that case? However, if there is an active backup of that account, data can be recovered pretty quickly. This will not only help you win customer trust, but also establish your credibility in the market.

 Increase Revenue

Increase in revenue also depends on your higher transaction value strategy and understanding what related products or services your customers might be interested in. That means the more diversified your services are, the greater opportunity there is for sales. You can also offer cloud-to-cloud backup solution as a standalone service just by partnering with us, and you can offer value by strengthening customer data protection strategy, and increase your sales.

Another way out is the number of repeat transactions generated from the same customer. If you offer a backup solution additionally as a value-added service, your customers will be satisfied and that would help you to retain a customer for a longer period of time which of course also means increase of revenue.

If you are interested in making your business distinct from your competition by adding cloud-to-cloud backup service to your portfolio, read more about CloudAlly’s Partner Program .

You can also further read more about “Why Backup Online Data” and on “Why do we need to backup Office 365” or “Google Apps misconceptions”

How to Free Up Gmail Storage

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We’ve received quite a few inquiries lately regarding using CloudAlly to free up Gmail storage as users approach their Google Apps for Business or Google Apps for Education Gmail limit of 25GB. In order to free up Gmail storage, your users will need to do some Gmail housekeeping to remove old emails, attachments, trash and spam.

Of course before anyone starts the clean-up process you should first take a complete backup of all users within your Google Apps domain to either local or cloud-based storage to ensure that users can recover any important messages that might be inadvertently deleted during the clean-up process. And that’s where CloudAlly comes in… Read more →