Archive for the ‘Product News & Features’ Category

Reports of Missing Folders in Google Docs

Just yesterday I wrote about why it’s important to back up not only docs but also folders in Google Docs. Today Bas Braams, a Level 13 Google Help Forum user, posted a list of recent reports of Google Docs users losing their folders:

1. Collections missing from “My collections”
2. Collection suddenly missing
3. Most of my collections are gone. Not all, just most. They were shared with others and they cannot see them either.
4. My collections disappeared
5. All of my collections are suddenly missing!
6. Collections have disappeared or become un-nested, docs disappeared from collections
7. My Collections are missing
8. Where have my collections gone?
9. I just looked through all the posts and see that it is not an isolated problem. I have LOST ALL MY FOLDERS.
10. I have clicked on my collections or spreadsheets, and I have lost them. They were erased. How can I recover them?

Bas points out that this “will not help the [original poster], but it may be helpful if someone at GDocs should look into the matter again.”

In the mean time, we strongly suggest backing up Google Docs with a system like Spanning Backup that backs up not only docs but also folders.

Why It’s Important to Back Up Not Only Docs But Also Folders

Imagine buying a backup program for your PC and using it diligently every day. Now imagine that one day your hard drive crashes. “Good thing I’ve been making backups every day,” you say to yourself as you restore your files from your backup. But your horror, instead of being restored along with their the original folder structure, all of your files are restored directly onto your Desktop in a disorganized mess. You spend the next few days—or weeks—recreating your folders by hand and figuring out which file goes where.

Folders in Google Docs

The moral of this story is that your backup system needs to back up not only your data (documents, spreadsheets, email, etc.) but also your metadata, which is data about your data, like the folders into which you’ve organized your documents.

Unlike our competition, Spanning Backup retains not only each of your Google Apps documents, but also information about the folders (collections) to which each document belongs and the hierarchical structure of those folders. And while this may sound esoteric, it turns out to be critically important.

Our company uses Google Docs for just about everything, including HR information. Documents are organized into folders for each employee, and further into folders for each department. Each employee folder contains some standard documents: Resume.pdf, Signed Offer Letter.pdf, etc.

Folders in Spanning Backup

If our backup system didn’t retain the folder structure of our documents, it would be losing important data every day. We’d be left with a jumble of documents all with the same title, and if we ever needed to restore all of them at once, we’d be left to sort them out manually.

With any nontrivial number of documents, this could be a nightmare. But Spanning Backup retains metadata and understands how to use it during the restore process, so documents are backed up and restored¹ with their folder structure intact.

Again, this may sound like an obvious approach but it turns out to be a competitive differentiator for us.

¹ As always, all Spanning Backup restores are non-destructive.

Google Chooses Spanning Backup as Staff Pick

Last week, Spanning Backup was selected as a Google Apps Marketplace Staff Pick, a program designed to help businesses find awesome applications offered in the Apps Marketplace. This is the note we received from the guys over at Google:

“Congrats on being chosen as an Apps Marketplace Staff Pick! This designation is awarded to apps which have a combination of great functionality and ease of use due to their deep integrations with Google Apps.”

Needless to say, we’re pretty stoked to be recognized by the Google staff. We’ve been listed in the “try popular & notable apps” section in a rotation for quite some time now, but it means a great deal to us to not only be popular but to be endorsed by the very people that make Google Apps.

On top of that, we’re excited to be in the company of other great, top-notch apps like SmartSheet, Mavenlink, Nimble, and Solve 360 to mention a few of the other apps on the Google Staff Picks list.

In case you missed it, we were also chosen as a founding member of the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps last month along with SherpaTools, Okta, Expensify, Insightly, RunMyProcess, and SmartSheet. As a company that prides itself as being business-class, we are thrilled that the Google Apps community is recognizing us one of the top-tier products in the marketplace.

Thanks Google Apps Team!

Understanding the Importance of Both Non-Destructive Backups and Restores

One of our competitors has been making a lot of noise recently about how they do “non-destructive restores”, meaning they don’t overwrite existing data when restoring old data from backup. Which is great, as far as that goes. We do restores in exactly the same way. In fact I don’t know of any backup products that don’t do restore this way.

But I think it’s worth pointing out that even though all Google Apps backup products restore data non-destructively, they differ significantly in how they back up that data in the first place.

Non-Destructive Backups

When we originally designed Spanning Backup, we started with a guiding principle: don’t lose anything. This may sound obvious, but it’s a fundamental difference between us and the competition. Spanning Backup backs up your Google Apps data automatically every day¹, and if it’s changed since the previous day’s backup, stores an additional copy. If it hasn’t changed, it stores that fact too.

Spanning Backup performs both
non-destructive backups and restores

The result is a historical record of your data with daily snapshots. To be clear: Spanning Backup never overwrites older backups with newer data. You can always restore any historical snapshot. Other systems take a different approach, and overwrite previous backups with the most current data.²

Let’s take a look at a couple of common scenarios where this difference is acutely important.

If you sync your Google calendars or contacts with mobile devices or other applications, chances are you’ve encountered sync-related data corruption, or that you will. And when data becomes corrupted in one place the corruption quickly syncs everywhere, causing corrupt data to be backed up.

Similarly, let’s say you open Google Docs one morning only to discover that your documents still exist but all of your collections are missing. Your documents and collections have been backed up for the day, so the backup is missing all collection information.

In both of these cases, the difference between destructive and non-destructive backups becomes immediately apparent. If your backup system has been backing up your data non-destructively, recovering from these situations is simple: you just restore from a known-good snapshot, delete the corrupted data, and get on with your life. This is how Spanning Backup works.

But if your backup system overwrites yesterday’s backups with today’s corrupted data, you’re out of luck. Your one and only “backup” copy of your data has been corrupted. Frankly, we don’t consider this to be “backup” in any meaningful sense.

These issues are subtle but important to understand, and can have a dramatic impact on how well your backup solution works when you need it most. We welcome any questions or comments, whether in the comments section below or via email at support@spanningbackup.com.

¹ You can also perform on-demand backups with Spanning Backup at any time.
² One competitor recently started retaining historical versions of document backups, which is certainly a step in the right direction. But unfortunately all of the document backups they made before introducing that change have been permanently lost. And since they still perform destructive backups of calendars and contacts, that data is still overwritten every day.

Spanning Announces First Business-Class Backup Service for Gmail

Top-Rated Backup Solution Adds Gmail Backup, Unlimited Storage, 99.9% Uptime SLA

Austin, Texas September 6, 2011

Spanning, the makers of Spanning Backup for Google Apps, today announced the general availability of Spanning Backup for Google Apps v2.0. Launched in September 2010, Spanning Backup is already the highest-rated backup app in the Google Apps Marketplace. The latest release adds business-class backup for Gmail, on top of the existing backup capabilities for Google Apps such as documents, contacts and calendars. Spanning also announced that all customers will now receive unlimited storage space and a 99.9% uptime SLA (service level agreement).

Spanning Backup has already backed up more than 7 billion documents, calendar events, and contacts for Google Apps users. The latest release extends the proven capabilities of the cloud-to-cloud backup product to Gmail data, making Spanning the most reliable, comprehensive backup solution for businesses on Google Apps.

“Gmail backup has been, by far, the most requested capability from our existing customer base,” said Charlie Wood, Spanning Cloud Apps founder and CEO. “After a successful private beta period, we’re excited to make it generally available and start helping businesses better protect their data. Data is the lifeblood of any business, and we’ve built Spanning Backup with a clear understanding of how important it is to protect our customer’s data.”

As more businesses shift to cloud platforms for business computing, the associated business requirements such as secure and reliable backup have lagged behind the adoption rate of services like Google Apps. Spanning Backup meets and exceeds business needs for an easy-to-use cloud-to-cloud backup solution, and has been tested across thousands of customers.

Spanning Backup for Google Apps is certified by TRUSTe and compliant with the US-EU and US-Swiss Safe Harbor Frameworks for privacy. Paired with a 99.9% uptime SLA and unlimited storage, it’s the most reliable choice for IT decision makers across the globe.

“We chose Spanning Backup for Google Apps because it provides incredibly thorough backup capabilities that scale to meet the needs of our nearly 2,000 employees,” said Hilary Croach, CIO of Bay Cove Human Services. “At Bay Cove Human Services, preserving and protecting our data is critical to our ability to serve our clients. With Spanning Backup, we can rest assured that we’re protected against data loss without having to make major investments in complex and bulky legacy solutions.”

Key Features of Spanning Backup for Google Apps v2.0 include:

• Backs up Google Apps email, documents, contacts, and calendars, and more.
• Incremental backup – Spanning Backup transfers only data created or updated since the last backup, optimizing performance and storage requirements.
• Non-destructive backup – Instead of overwriting previously backed up data with newer backups, Spanning Backup retains historical versions of each backup, allowing users to choose which backup snapshot to restore.
• Cloud-to-cloud backup – With Spanning Backup, an organization’s Google Apps data is protected using Amazon Web Services’ cloud infrastrcuture. Like Google, Amazon is a world-class cloud provider with SAS-70 and SSAE-16 certified data centers. Spanning Backup understands how to use Amazon services to provide the highest level of availability.
• Metadata backup and restore – Spanning Backup backs up and restores document directory structures, nested folders, sharing and permissions settings, contact photos, and more.
• Full admin control and privacy – Spanning Backup provides a user recovery impersonation function, so that an administrator can restore a document for an end user without ever being exposed to the contents of the document.
• Dead-simple file recovery and restore processes – Spanning Backup is so simple anyone can use it, but robust enough to meet the needs of corporate IT.
• Certified privacy and security – The Spanning Backup site, application, and Google Apps Marketplace listings are certified for privacy and security by TRUSTe, the leading online privacy solutions provider. In addition, Spanning Backup is certified under the US-EU and US-Swiss Safe Harbor Frameworks.
• 99.9% uptime SLA – Spanning offers a 99.9% uptime service level agreement, matching that offered by Google for Google Apps.

Spanning Backup for Google Apps is the best choice for businesses that need secure and reliable protection against the risk of data loss.

For more information, please visit www.spanning.com/product/spanningbackup.

About Spanning:

Founded in 2010, Spanning helps companies manage and protect their information in the cloud. Spanning Backup, the company’s flagship product, is the top-rated backup solution for Google Apps users and administrators. The company is backed by Foundry Group, and is based in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit www.spanning.com.