Q&A with Carbonite's Jamie Zajac - November 2020

what  are Carbonite plans for 2021.
is there an affordable cheaper backup solution to backup normal data (not database).
 

As always, thanks in advance for your questions! 

We’re going to start things off by answering a few questions that came in from our community and Luminary members. 

How does the Carbonite backup software work? - Tom C. 

How does Carbonite Backup for Microsoft 365 compare to other Microsoft 365 backup utilities? - Koby D. 

What are the difference between Webroot and Carbonite endpoint? - Adriano C. 

How does this differ from the built in Microsoft office 365 backup? Arnold 

Is this suitable for a full disaster recovery situation? - Joe R. 

Carbonite is focused on a few key things in 2021. 

1. We are delivering cyber resilience - the ability to absorb a “digital punch” and get back up and running. We believe that multiple layers of security + data protection is key to this so we are building more integrations between our products. Our first integration on the consumer side launches very soon and you can expect more. 
2. We are expanding our server backup product to cover more scenarios. We’ve already released our rapid VM recovery for VMWare and we have Hyper-V planned for early in 2021. We are also adding an automated trial option, backup verification reports, and much more. 
3. Simplifying reporting and management - we always get feedback from our customers for new reports and management functions that we are adding. For example, on our Carbonite Endpoint product, we have a lot of reporting functions coming to better identify devices where the backups are having issues. 

It’s hard to summarize all of our roadmap in just a few bullet but I hope that helps. 

In terms of affordable backup solutions for normal data, we have a few options for just computers and files. Our cheapest would be Carbonite Core which can backup as many computers as you like with a shared storage quota starting at 250GB (you can add-on in 100GB increments). If you have a Windows server, then we start with Power that can backup 1 server or Ultimate with as many servers and computers as you need. If you have linux servers or virtual machines that you want to backup at the hypervisor level, then Carbonite Server is the best bet. 

I’d start with this page: https://www.carbonite.com/backup-software/buy-carbonite-safe

We have several products within Carbonite – each to cover off a specific piece of your environment. 

Generally speaking, we have an agent that you install on your endpoint or server which is managed from a cloud console. Data is always encrypted before it is uploaded to the Carbonite cloud and then we offer various restore options. We do have some server solutions that can work on a NAS device or local appliance and some solutions which are completely cloud to cloud.

I’ll highlight 2 key differences that we typically encounter. 

First, Carbonite has an expansive list of applications that we support. Within each of those we also support a deep level of application support. We cover Outlook, OneDrive, Sharepoint, Teams, Planner, Groups, and project online. Each application is also very deep. For example, within teams, we have a lot of coverage such as including public and private channels, channel permissions, and more. 

Second, our solution is completely cloud to cloud so there is absolutely no infrastructure to install or manage on premise. This means that you don’t need to worry about data sizes increasing, bandwidth, software upgrades, etc.

Webroot endpoint is an endpoint security product to protect your devices from malicious activity such as web-based threats, phishing, and malware.

Carbonite endpoint is a backup product for your endpoints which will protect all of your files and data securely in the cloud. 

Combined, they offer a complete protection for your endpoint devices and the ability to protect and recover from anything including malicious threats, insider attacks, accidental deletion, lost/stolen devices, and other forms of data loss.  

Microsoft does not protect the data so there are several important scenarios that they do not cover. 

1. Microsoft does not know the difference between accidental/malicious deletion or deletion due to normal course of business. This leaves you vulnerable to data loss if someone deletes items and the recycle bin is emptied
2. When someone leaves the organization, Microsoft will keep data for their license for 30 days. After that, you lose the content that they had so you need a place to archive it. 
3. With sharing in onedrive, sharepoint, and teams, there are no ways to rollback permissions in case of a mistake. Microsoft requires that you un-share everything and then build it from scratch which is time-consuming and nearly impossible to get right.

The good answer is always “it depends” but we do offer a few disaster recovery options. 

1. Carbonite Server backup allows for local and cloud-based storage so that you can have fast restores locally or restore from the cloud in case the office is not available
2. Our Disaster-recover-as-a-Service products allows you to spin up servers in our cloud automatically to completely run your environment. We can support this in an automated fashion or with our managed services team to provide a white-glove service. You can specify complex items such as networking, boot order, script points, and more to make sure to meet your needs. 
3. We offer our Carbonite Availability product to do real-time replication and high availability between your own data centers or clouds so you can completely own the process if you want.

Thanks again for submitting your questions and to everyone who came out today. Also a big round of applause to @jzajac for taking time out of her day to answer all of these questions. 

Really appreciate it!