Flexibility is necessary in terms of the types of data your solution protects. The days of using one backup application for servers, another for workstations, and yet another for SaaS applications should be long over. If you can manage more types of backup with one product, you’ll save yourself time and aggravation. Imagine being able to check the status of all your clients’ backups, across all their devices, from a single screen. Flexibility in a backup product can give you hours back every week that would otherwise be spent on mundane tasks—like opening and closing multiple different backup tools and performing routine administrative tasks multiple different ways.
MSPs should also expect flexibility in the types of recovery a backup solution can perform. Recovery flexibility can help you save the day in multiple different scenarios. Whether you need to recover a single deleted file or perform bare-metal restore on a full server or workstation, your ideal solution should be flexible enough to do either—and do it quickly and efficiently. Likewise, the same tool should allow you to perform reactive and proactive recovery as needed.
Finally, look for flexibility in terms of who on your team can manage the data protection solution. Too many MSPs have a complex patchwork of products that only one technician fully understands. What if that one person finds a new job? The right backup product should provide enough ease of use that anyone on your team—even the more junior admins—can understand and use it. After all, unnecessary complexity is so last decade.
Want to learn more about criteria for evaluating data protection solutions? Check out the Buyer’s Guide to Data Protection, found here.
Carrie Reber is senior product marketing manager for SolarWinds MSP.
