Asigra Inc. has announced further evidence of a growing trend in business productivity solution deployments: SaaS use is on the rise through the increasing popularity of applications including Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps, and Salesforce.com, causing companies using these services to examine the issue of data protection to prevent data loss.

As evidence of this trend, Odin’s fifth annual U.S. SMB Cloud Insights™ report forecasts that the cloud services market for small and medium business (SMB) will expand 11.4% (compound annual growth rate) over the next three years, and is predicted to reach $34.9 billion by 2018. Odin’s CEO Birger Steen recently told the press: “Over the five years that we have been conducting this study, we’ve seen a rapid and consistent growth in SMB consumption of cloud services. Applications and capabilities that were previously reserved for enterprise-size organizations are now benefiting millions of smaller businesses.”

Additionally, through the first three quarters of fiscal 2015, Microsoft reported that its Commercial Office 365 user base rose 10 points since last year, supporting commercial cloud revenue growth of 106%. And according to Google’s senior vice president and chief business officer Nikesh Arora, more than half of all Fortune 500 companies now use Google Apps for Business and the company’s enterprise products. Arora recently told Talkin’ Cloud that more than 5 million businesses use Google’s productivity apps. In the article, reporter Joe Panettieri also noted that “Microsoft and Google are saying the same exact thing about their Fortune 500 penetration,” since during an earnings call, Microsoft’s CFO Amy Hood said over 50% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure, and Office 365 now boasts a $1.5 billion annual run rate.

Despite this increased usage in cloud-based business productivity suites, however, most SaaS apps offer very limited data recovery capabilities in the event of data loss. Customers are growing increasingly concerned about these clear limitations, as evidenced by discussions on the topic in Microsoft Office 365’s community forums, where users share disappointing experiences of losing data and needing to do their own backups.

With the industry forecasting continued growth of SaaS use, businesses need to take extra precautions to protect their important data against potential loss due to accidental or malicious deletion. Asigra’s cloud-to-cloud backup support for Microsoft Office 365, for example, provides secure backup of the data to authorized cloud service providers or the organization’s own private cloud.

“As cloud adoption continues to grow, there will be ongoing unreported data loss events inside these environments. Even with secure SaaS applications, it is still the customer’s responsibility to backup that information to ensure its recovery,” said Eran Farajun, executive vice president, Asigra. “Asigra cloud-to-cloud backup capabilities include the support for Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps, and Salesforce.com. Organizations seeking to prevent the unfortunate loss of data from these key SaaS applications have an ally in this effort with Asigra.”

Odin 5th annual U.S. SMB Cloud Insights™ report, Yahoo Finance, May 12, 2015, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/odin-smb-cloud-insights-report-160000244.html

Office 365: Cash Cow for Microsoft?, Yahoo Finance, 5/8, 2015, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/office-365-cash-cow-microsoft-204808634.html

Google Apps for Business: Fortune 500 Companies Engage, Talkin’ Cloud, July 2013, http://talkincloud.com/google-apps-vs-office-365/google-apps-business-fortune-500-companies-engage

This article was originally posted “Data Protection Concerns Rise As Demand Continues for Cloud-Based Business Productivity Suites” from Cloud Strategy Magazine.