Salesforce Announce Native Backup and Restore Product
The world of Salesforce Backup has been an exciting place over the past 18 months. With companies relying on their Cloud systems more than ever, a comprehensive, specialist Salesforce backup tool is becoming a necessity.
This is why Salesforce has announced Backup and Restore, a new data recovery service native to the Salesforce Platform.
Salesforce Backup & Restore
The Salesforce Ecosystem has an abundance of Backup Solutions, but after speaking to their customers, Salesforce felt that the demand for a native, on-platform solution, was very much there.
Backup & Restore, announced at Dreamforce 2021, is currently being piloted by a select few customers, but is due to be generally available in October 2021.
Built with ease of use in mind, Backup and Restore automatically creates backup copies of business data, empowering any organization to restore data and recover, in just a few clicks, from even worst-case scenarios.
Salesforce Backup & Restore will come with all the features you would expect for an enterprise-level backup service. This will include…
- The ability to automate daily backups of standard objects, custom objects.
- Restore backed-up data into Orgs, whilst automatically deleting older backups after designated time intervals.
- Perform high-level audits on who is initating, modifying, or running backups.
- All data backups will be encrypted at rest and in transit.
AppExchange Solutions Vs Salesforce
Current native backup solutions for Salesforce are fairly rudimentary and time-consuming. They include ways to export and extremely manual ways to import data back into Salesforce after data loss. Current solutions include Data Export Service, and Data Loader.
With the world moving remote, and having more reliance on Cloud systems, of course, Backup is important for everyday user error and data loss.
However, Backup is also being baked into Salesforce DevOps processes. If Development teams are using Continuous Integration/Deployment, releasing new features, and fixing bugs multiple times a day, it’s important to have both data, and metadata backup to revert to previous system states if necessary.
ISV solutions such as OwnBackup, Gearset & Spanning Backup have been around for years and have comprehensive products. So how does Salesforce position itself against AppExchange Apps? Marla Hay, Salesforce’s VP of Product Management gave us some insight…
“Salesforce customers enjoy the benefits of a rich partner ecosystem.
But we’ve spent a lot of time listening to our customers, and it became clear many of them were specifically looking for native backup and restore solutions that delivered the performance, speed and scale — not to mention ease of use — they’ve come to expect from the Salesforce Platform.
Backup and Restore is a direct response to that demand that will continue to provide additional ways to innovate and extend the solutions found throughout our ecosystem.” Marla Hay, Salesforce’s VP of Product Management
It’s safe to say the total addressable market for Salesforce Backup Solutions is huge. OwnBackup is one of the largest providers and has over 3,000 customers, a fraction of the 150,000 total Salesforce customers.
Whilst the market is large, I’m sure there will be some fierce competition for customers who are yet to implement a Backup solution. OwnBackup and other providers have the jump on Salesforce, but with Backup & Restore being the only native backup solution, the innovation potential could be higher.
Whatever the future holds for these Backup solutions, it’s great to see another option hit the market, which stands out as the only native option available for Salesforce customers.
Craig
Is there any chance of sandbox seeding?
Jon
Yes, please! Currently one of our biggest headaches when spinning up sandboxes!
Megan
This looks very interesting and useful. Will this be included in current packages or will it be an additional cost and if so, any info on price points for this?
Joan Ryan
Is there any pricing info available yet? Or (gasp) is this a free product?
Sam
hahaha..I love the “gasp”
fingers crossed
Mike
Is a Salesforce Backup, hosted by Salesforce, really a true backup? If Salesforce is down, doesn’t your backup go down with it? I’m thinking disaster recovery, more than day to day, recycling bin type recovery… I like the prospect of a native tool, but wonder if I should be saving off data and metadata to datalake + github for true redundancy.
Doug Y
There are ways SF behaves like Amazon, being a platform for small businesses and the when they become successful, jump in with both feet as competitor
Phil
I’ve never seen Salesforce introduce anything “Free”. While a Backup/Restore solution should be included with the platform, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Mike
Do you keep your spare set of keys in your glove box in case you get locked out of your car? Probably not. So does it make sense to keep your backup on platform or are you better off with an independent application?
Mike
That’s a great question. I would address that specifically to the Salesforce PM above.
Kieran Maguire
Salesforce also have their own backup strategy in case of failure on their side.
Generally, the main use cases for backup solutions on Salesforce are problems caused by the end user:
– data migration problem
– malicious intent
– accidental overwrite by user
– etc.
But you’re right, it’s an extra piece of mind to have the data additionally backed up outside of SF control
Poornima Menon
This looks very cool. Does it come with all editions? Or requires to be implemented on an additional cost?
Chris
Be curious to know how this compares to a solution like OwnBackup.
Anthony
I wonder what this will mean for current OwnBackup customers. Will their be a need to pay for OwnBackup?
Adam
If it’s at parity, no… there won’t be. I’d bet nickels to pesos that SF offered to buy them and OwnBackup declined. [Own Backup CEO kicks dirt, takes toys, goes home]
Martin
Would be nice to see the full feature list of this. however, I’m afraid they will do a pricing like 10% of your yearly costs and therefore the solution will not interesting for big corps compared to the competitors like ownbackup. (Except Salesforce is buying ownbackup)
Dave
Is this official? (Salesforce is buying OwnBackup)
Sue
One of the Dreamforce moderators said that this will be a paid service, and pricing would be based on the amount of data.
Peter
What type of metadata components are backed up? Are we talking about page layouts, workflows, etc?
Ben McCarthy
Hi Peter, exactly. Whilst we don’t have all the details, this is how existing backup services work so I believe Salesforce’s will have similar functionality.
Kelly Goffin
I think that this used to be a standard feature and then it was withdrawn. I was shown it when first starting out as a trainer 4 years ago – hopefully it will be complimentary
Ben McCarthy
Hi Kelly, you might be referring to the Data recovery service that is different to the new Backup product – https://www.salesforceben.com/salesforce-announce-to-reintroduce-their-data-recovery-service/
Tal
Is there any update on expected date?
Suneel
As of Nov 15, 2021, “Backup and Restore” is Generally Available…
https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.rn_security_backup_restore_ga.htm&type=5&release=234
Nicolas
Anyone heard any updates on this product? They announced it to much fanfare, then crickets.
Ben McCarthy
Hey Nicolas, there hasn’t been a lot of news since the initial announcement. It does look like the product is generally available from the link below. But Salesforce had a long roadmap with this product, and we haven’t heard much – https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.rn_security_backup_restore_ga.htm&type=5&release=234