Nowadays companies are handling and managing millions of records on a daily basis across Sales cloud, service cloud, health cloud, financial cloud and other related solutions.
With so many valuable information, it is really important for the companies to be able to manage and store this data and simultaneously remove it once it becomes obsolete.
For any organisation, it is significant that they imbibe modern technologies to archive and backup their data so that it is not only time saving but it also saves them from manually processing it. By this they can ensure that they maintain consistent data archival and protection.
While many might use the terms archiving and backup interchangeably, there is a difference between these terms. They are different in their own ways but they also complement each other in many ways. So, before we move to understanding why archiving and backup are essential, lets understand what these terms actually mean and how they work.
An Archive contains all the historical and rarely used Salesforce data that is located out of production. Once such information is archived, it moves to a long-term retention for future use, if any. It is basically moving the information and sub-information to an external and long-term storage.
A Backup, on the other hand, is basically a copy of the entire Salesforce production org or sandbox environment that can quickly restore in events such as accidental data loss or corruption cases caused due to human error, malicious intent, bad code or rogue integrations. They are usually used for short term retention.
Irrespective of the differences or similarities between archiving and backing up, it is significant to understand that archive does not replace the need for backup and vice-versa.
Now that we have shed some light on the terms individually, let’s understand how these terms are essential for any organisation.
- Archiving data helps in purging the system of data that is of limited day-to day value. This will prevent the company from having an exceeding data and restricted storage data. Archiving will also aid in recognising and acting upon the data that is obsolete. This will prevent the organisation from having an overabundance of unnecessary data.
- Backup, on the other hand, primarily helps in protecting the data. All the data that is lost or corrupted must be restored and backed up to maintain the business continuity. Backing up and archiving, both, majorly help in decluttering the irrelevant and obsolete data thus improving organisation’s speed and performance.
- Additionally, with an automated archiving solution and exemplary back up system, companies can define custom archiving policies and set custom retention limits to safely remove data from Salesforce while accommodating for regulations.
- There can be several threats to an organisation, in terms of external as well as internal threats. External could be cyberattacks, viruses and phishing attacks. While internal could be threats coming from suppliers, employers or other parties that can access Salesforce data. A good archiving and back-up solution helps in protecting the organisation from these and many such threats by monitoring who has the access to what data and by implementing a proper security and permissions set.
- With the evolving business and increasing profit, the customer data is going to increase manifold as well. The archiving and backup solutions help the organisations to scale the growth as well as handle the excess data. Data archiving aids in transferring unused data to an external server. This not only prevents the company from paying additional charges but it also helps them to free up their storage spaces ensuring a smooth workflow.
- Salesforce archive analyses data and minimises the cost associated with storage and administrative activities like audit, compliance, information retrieval etc. These backups and archiving solutions, additionally, helps in managing data discovery requests in case of legal matters.
- Data archiving and backup tools allow users to adjust settings to best fit their needs. The retention period for archived data can be adjusted all the way up to 99 years so you are able to maintain access to these files for generations.
Thus, if we try and understand all that we have discussed in this blog we understand that backups are important to protect data in case of any unexpected event while Archiving is important to maintain the performance of the organisation, reduce the storage cost and to comply with data retention regulations. However, both the systems of archiving an backing up should work parallelly to provide a robust data management strategy for your Salesforce organisation.
Galvantrix, a partner of Salesforce, had helped many companies with these archival and back-up solutions and aided them in securing their important data with utmost security. To know more about Salesforce Archiving and Backup Solutions , click here.
