Venture Technology Groups Mitigates Risk With Spanning

[Editor’s Note: This is the fifth post in a new Q&A series with Spanning customers. Keep an eye out for new posts to learn more about how our customers are using Google Apps, how they’re using Spanning for backup, and tips they have for other businesses looking to “Go Google”.]

Tom Pace,
Venture Technology Groups

Why did you choose Spanning Backup for Google Apps?

Even though Google’s servers should not lose information, it’s always possible. To easily backup our data on Amazon’s servers as well as Google’s is a great solution to achieve backup redundancy.

Spanning provides the ability to access data without using the Google interface. When I was told this, that was a huge selling point because when servers are down, and if everything is stored online, the ability to access our information is critical.

Did you consider any other backup providers, and what do you think about the other options out there?

Yes. We considered about 3 other providers. No other option seemed to be as ‘hands-off’ as Spanning. Spanning is a great deal for what you get, and the customer service is fantastic as well.

Tell us a bit about your setup process with Spanning Backup? What is the good, bad and ugly of the setup?

It was pretty much as simple as informing the team at Spanning which users to backup.

That’s it. Done.

What prompted you to back up your businesses Google Apps data initially?

More than any other reason, it was risk mitigation. Pure and simple.

Have you ever restored data using Spanning Backup? How would you describe the process?

Fortunately, I have not only had to restore any data for testing purposes. It is not a complicated process, and this feature is paramount in selling the cloud strategy to old-school colleagues.

What new features would be most useful to your business?

I would like to be able to access backed up files without going through Google Apps – in case there is an outage and I cannot access Google. If there were a way to search for a file that was needed and then download it directly through Spanning, it could be very beneficial. It would also be helpful to be able to search for files to backup.

How does Google Apps fit within your organization IT/cloud strategy?

The less I have to manage in house, the better. That said, I need to ensure that data being stored off-site is available after a disaster strikes.

How much of your business’s content/data is in Google Apps?

Currently, it’s mostly email, calendars, contacts and some product spec sheets. It’s a big shift for users to get them using the spreadsheet, presentation and word processing apps. I think that once there is better email/docs integration, more users will use it. The docs need to resemble local drives that users are familiar with in order to appeal to many populations.