Datto Gives MSPs New Cloud Backup Tools

Written by Frank J. Ohlhorst
April 30, 2018

Automated cross-cloud backup solutions are somewhat rare for today’s MSPs, an issue Datto is looking to address with some advice and a cornucopia of services.

MSPs today are faced with numerous challenges, especially when it comes to cross-cloud solutions that leverage hyperclouds, such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Arguably, data protection is at the top of everyone’s mind with those complex environments. While many strides have been made toward securing data, there still seems to be an unnecessary level of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around one of the most basic tenets of data protection — backup.

Datto is looking to remove FUD from the business of cloud-based backup and provide MSPs with new tools that can extend backup and recovery capabilities beyond the network edge, while also exemplifying the cloud as a repository for backup data. That said, any MSP knows that data come in multiple forms and are destined for different use cases. For example, some data need to be preserved for archival purposes and potential audits, while other data need to be protected in real time as part of business-continuity solutions. Dozens of other use cases exist for data backup, ranging from basic protection against system failures to recovery from data corruption, or even as a means to restore data prior to a malware infestation. While the root causes of the need for recovery might vary, there is an all too common theme with data in general — it must be protected.

With the rise of the hyperclouds, data today can be spread across numerous service providers, including storage services such as those offered by AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and numerous other cloud-based solutions, such as IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS offerings; yet, orchestrating the protection of all that data in its various iterations has become a complex endeavor, requiring the use of numerous, disjointed tools to achieve an acceptable level of protection. MSPs are finding that supporting a cacophony of backup platforms, tools and services is becoming untenable and can lead to customers losing data, simply because a policy setting or control was overlooked.

While Datto is only one of many in the cloud-backup game, the company is taking a more unified approach to incorporating backup tools and services into a customizable offering; for example, the company wants to leverage their backup offerings, such as Backupify, which is geared toward SaaS backup for Office 365, G Suite, Salesforce and other SaaS services, with Datto Drive, a file-sync-and-share platform that can store data files in Datto’s own cloud.

It is the combination of those Datto offerings that can bring advanced, multicloud backup functionalities to MSPs. Datto refers to those capabilities as C2C (cloud-to-cloud) backup and restore, which can be used to support numerous use cases. For many MSPs, the intersection between cloud services and data protection could prove to be a profitable service-delivery model, which helps to alleviate customer concerns, while also establishing the MSP as the champion of data protection and, in case of failure, the first, best resource to get businesses up and running again.

Naturally, Datto is not alone in its quest to bring hypercloud backup services to the cloud, vendors such as IASO, Arcserve, Acronis, and many others are all beginning to tout their MSP-friendly backup offerings, each with their own unique flavor and market positioning. However, the sweet spot for the savvy MSP lies with orchestrating backup across the numerous hybrid cloud offerings that their varied customer base will bring to bear.