In this guide we break down what is Backup as a Service (BaaS) , revealing why backing up your organization’s data is one of the most important steps you can take to protect against data loss events, such as ransomware attacks, that could jeopardize your business’s ability to operate normally.
But backup and recovery operations are also among the most complex types of IT responsibilities businesses face. To make matters worse, mistakes like failure to set the right RTO and RPO goals or forgetting to encrypt your backup data could result in backups that don’t actually enable successful recovery.
This is why Backup as a Service (BaaS) can be a compelling solution for many businesses. BaaS makes it possible to outsource backup and recovery operations to a third-party provider who handles the complexities of data protection for you. BaaS solutions allow IT teams to stop worrying about data backup and recovery and invest their energies in other areas (like rolling out new services for the company) that create new value.
Read on for a detailed look at what Backup as a Service, how Backup as a Service works, why it may benefit your business and what to consider when implementing a BaaS solution.
What is BaaS or Backup as a Service?
Backup as a Service (BaaS) is a type of data protection solution where a third-party vendor manages a business’s data backup and recovery needs. Here's an overview of what we'll discuss in this article:
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Automated data collection
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Automated data restoration
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Storage infrastructure
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How does BaaS work?
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Benefits of Backup as a Service
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Potential challenges of Backup as a Service
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How to select a BaaS solution
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Questions to ask prospective BaaS vendors
With BaaS, you don’t have to worry about writing scripts to copy data from production systems to backup infrastructure, or about how you’ll restore data following an outage. Nor do you need to set up and manage your own backup storage infrastructure. The BaaS solution does all of this for you.
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Automated data collection
One of the foundational and most compelling features of Backup as a Service (BaaS) is its capability for automated collection of the data that a business needs to back up. This feature represents a radical departure from manual or semi-manual backup processes that have historically been prone to human error, inconsistencies, and significant time investment. In traditional backup setups, IT administrators often had to contend with writing complex scripts, scheduling tasks, and constantly monitoring whether data was being copied effectively from production systems to backup infrastructure. This was a tedious, resource-intensive, and inherently risky endeavor. A missed script execution, a full backup disk, or a misconfigured setting could lead to incomplete backups, leaving critical data vulnerable.
BaaS eliminates this manual burden by providing sophisticated automation engines that orchestrate the entire data collection process. This begins with an initial setup where the backup as a service providers' agents or connectors are deployed onto the source systems (servers, workstations, databases, applications, virtual machines, etc.) from which data needs to be backed up. Once configured, these agents intelligently identify and capture the designated data. This isn't just a simple file copy; it involves intricate processes like change block tracking, which only backs up the modified portions of files since the last backup, significantly reducing bandwidth consumption and backup windows. This intelligent data collection ensures efficiency and minimizes impact on production systems.
The automation extends to scheduling and execution. Instead of manually initiating backups, BaaS solutions allow for highly customizable backup schedules – daily, hourly, or even continuous data protection (CDP) for near real-time replication of changes. This ensures that backups occur consistently and frequently, reducing the potential for data loss between backup cycles. The automation engine handles the execution of these schedules, initiating backups without manual intervention, monitoring their progress, and retrying failed attempts. This proactive management by the BaaS vendor means that businesses don't have to worry about whether a backup actually happened or if it was successful; the system is designed to handle these operational details autonomously.
Furthermore, automated data collection in BaaS often includes features for application-consistent backups. This is crucial for databases and other transactional applications where simply copying files can lead to corrupted or unusable data. BaaS solutions integrate with application-specific APIs (e.g., VSS for Windows applications, or database-specific agents) to quiesce applications momentarily, ensuring that the data captured is in a consistent and recoverable state. This level of sophistication in automated data collection is difficult and costly to achieve with in-house solutions, particularly for organizations lacking specialized expertise.
The benefits of this automated approach are multifaceted. Firstly, it drastically reduces the operational overhead for internal IT teams, freeing them from mundane backup tasks and allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives. Secondly, it virtually eliminates human error from the backup process, leading to more reliable and complete backups. Thirdly, it ensures a higher frequency of backups, which directly translates to a lower Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – meaning less data loss in the event of a disaster. Finally, the ability to automate complex data collection across diverse environments (physical servers, virtual machines, cloud instances, SaaS applications) provides a unified and consistent data protection strategy that is challenging to replicate with disparate tools. The core strength of managed backup as a service lies in this automated, intelligent, and hands-off approach to data collection, providing businesses with confidence in the integrity and availability of their critical information.
Automated data restoration
The second critical feature, intrinsically linked to the first, encompasses features for automatically restoring data following a failure and the underlying storage infrastructure (often in the form of cloud storage) that hosts backup data. While automated data collection is vital for getting data into the backup system, the true value of any backup solution lies in its ability to quickly and reliably restore that data when disaster strikes. BaaS excels in this area by providing automated, user-friendly, and robust recovery capabilities, all underpinned by highly resilient and scalable storage infrastructure.
In traditional backup scenarios, the restoration process could be as complex and error-prone as the backup itself. It often involved identifying the correct backup media, loading tapes or disks, navigating complex restoration software interfaces, and hoping that the data was intact and usable. In a crisis, every minute counts, and a cumbersome restoration process can lead to significant downtime and financial losses. BaaS streamlines this by offering automated restoration features designed for speed and simplicity. This typically includes intuitive web-based dashboards where users can easily browse through their backup archives, select specific files, folders, applications, or even entire systems (bare-metal recovery), and initiate a restore with just a few clicks. The automation engine then handles the entire process, retrieving the data from the cloud storage and deploying it back to the original or a new location, often with options for granular recovery down to individual items within an application.
Beyond simple file restoration, BaaS solutions often provide advanced recovery options like virtual machine (VM) instant recovery. This allows an entire backed-up VM to be booted directly from the cloud storage in minutes, providing immediate access to critical applications and data while the full restoration is performed in the background. This drastically reduces Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), minimizing business disruption during major outages. Furthermore, automated disaster recovery (DR) testing capabilities are frequently included, allowing businesses to simulate recovery scenarios without impacting production environments, ensuring that their recovery plan is sound and effective when it's truly needed.
Storage infrastructure
This is a cornerstone of the BaaS model. Instead of requiring businesses to invest in and manage their own local storage arrays, tape libraries, or network-attached storage (NAS) devices, backup as a service providers leverage highly scalable, secure, and geographically redundant cloud storage platforms (such as Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, or proprietary cloud infrastructure). This cloud-based storage offers several key advantages.
Unparalleled scalability
Businesses can store as much data as they need without worrying about capacity planning or purchasing additional hardware. This "pay-as-you-go" model makes it incredibly cost-effective, eliminating large upfront capital expenditures.
Superior durability and availability
Leading cloud providers design their infrastructure with multiple layers of redundancy, distributing data across numerous servers and even different geographical regions. This dramatically reduces the risk of data loss due to hardware failure or localized disasters. Data stored in the cloud is also typically protected by robust physical and environmental security measures that would be prohibitively expensive for most individual businesses to implement in-house.
Critical protection
The offsite nature of cloud storage provides critical protection against site-specific disasters like fires, floods, or major power outages that could destroy on-premise backups. This geographical separation is a fundamental tenet of a strong disaster recovery strategy.
Finally, the managed aspect of BaaS extends to this storage infrastructure. The backup as a service providers are responsible for the maintenance, upgrades, security, and performance of the cloud storage. They handle data integrity checks, ensure compliance with relevant regulations, and optimize storage tiers for cost and performance. This complete outsourcing of storage management frees businesses from the complexities of storage administration, allowing them to focus on their core operations while benefiting from enterprise-grade reliability and security. A resilient, scalable cloud storage backbone makes the third feature of BaaS an indispensable component for modern data protection.
How does BaaS work?
Backup as a Service solutions work based on the following steps:
Find a solution
First, you choose a BaaS platform, such as MSP360.
What is Backup as Service? Select backup services
Within the BaaS platform, choose the specific backup features and capabilities – such as file-level backup or block-level backup – you want to enable.
Configure backup schedules
Using scheduling features built into the BaaS solution, determine how frequently backups should occur. (For guidance on choosing the frequency of backup routines, check out our blog on designing backup policies.)
Configure additional options
You may also choose to enable or set up other features, such as backup encryption and backup alerts.
With these capabilities in place, your BaaS solution is ready to keep your data protected and provide the backups your IT team needs to restore data quickly in the event of an outage or cyberattack.
Benefits of Backup as a Service
Not every business needs a Backup as a Service solution. Organizations that don’t have a lot of data to back up, or that operate in industries where data protection and compliance are not important, may be able to get by without a BaaS platform.
But in most other cases, BaaS delivers several key benefits that can make data protection faster, more reliable and more cost-effective. Key advantages of BaaS include:
- Reduced IT overhead: BaaS frees IT teams from having to implement and manage backup software manually.
- Less downtime risk: The comprehensive backup capabilities and automation features of BaaS platforms help to minimize downtime risks and maximize business continuity.
- Predictable costs: By outsourcing backup needs to a BaaS provider, like MSP360, that offers transparent, predictable pricing, businesses know exactly what they’re paying for backup.
- Enhanced scalability: BaaS solutions can scale easily as your organization grows or as you need to protect new types of data. Backup solutions implemented in-house may be tougher to scale due to IT resource limitations.
- Improved compliance: The backup monitoring and reporting capabilities offered by some BaaS platforms can help businesses prove to auditors and regulators that they are meeting data protection compliance requirements.
Potential challenges of Backup as a Service
On balance, it’s important to note that Backup as a Service offerings can have potential drawbacks.
For one, there is a risk in some cases of becoming locked into a certain vendor. This can happen if you choose a BaaS product that forces you to store data on a specific cloud, for example, or that only backs up data from a specific type of software platform. The good news is that vendor lock-in is easy to avoid when you choose a storage-agnostic, data-agnostic BaaS solution.
Bandwidth limitations may also sometimes present a challenge in the context of BaaS. This is because backup data needs to move over the Internet between production environments and the BaaS vendor’s backup infrastructure. Slow connections may lead to slow backup routines.
One way to mitigate this challenge is to choose a BaaS product that lets you store backup data on multiple clouds or other platforms. That way, you can host your backup data on whichever storage location is closest to your various production systems. You avoid the network bottlenecks that may occur when moving large volumes of data to a single, proprietary storage platform.
Total cost of ownership (TCO) costs for BaaS software may also be high, particularly when BaaS vendors tack on additional charges for extra features, or when they require you to store backups on a specific cloud platform (where storage costs may be higher than those of alternative storage options).
What is Backup as a Service: Avoid TCO risks by choosing BaaS providers that offer transparent pricing, and that give you maximum choice to decide where and how to store backup data.
How to select a BaaS solution
When comparing BaaS offerings, consider features like the following to ensure that you get the full set of data protection capabilities you need at the lowest possible price:
- Centralized management and monitoring: The ability to manage all backups through a single portal saves time and maximizes IT efficiency.
- Built-in security: Native support for encrypting backups and enforcing backup immutability helps to keep backup data secure.
- Scalability: Choose products that offer the automation capabilities necessary to scale backup operations as your business grows.
- Compliance support: BaaS solutions that are designed to meet specific compliance requirements can help ensure that backup data is stored in a compliant way, and that you have the reporting capabilities necessary to demonstrate compliance.
What is Backup as a Service (BaaS) questions for vendors
Going further to what is Backup as a Service, consider asking potential BaaS software vendors the following questions to evaluate the robustness and flexibility of their products:
- Which security and data protection capabilities do you offer? For example, does the product support 2FA or object lock?
- Which platforms can you back up? Ideally, the solution will be comprehensive enough to backup data from any and all major software platforms and environments – Windows, macOS, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and more.
- How customizable is the product? For instance, does it support custom retention policies, schedules and notifications?
- Which backup storage options are available? The best BaaS offerings are storage-agnostic, meaning you can choose to store backup data anywhere.
- How is pricing structured? Does the vendor offer transparent, pay-as-you-go pricing?
- Is a free trial available? The ability to test a product out is the best way to confirm that it’s the right fit.
These are all areas where MSP360 Managed Backup shines. As a storage-agnostic backup and recovery solution that can protect virtually any type of data using advanced automation, reporting and compliance capabilities, MSP360 helps businesses maximize backup efficiency while minimizing costs. Find the perfect answer for yourself to what is Backup as a Service by requesting a free trial.
