Introduction

When most people think about backup, they picture saving files. Word documents, spreadsheets, maybe some photos. But here’s the reality for businesses in 2025: the most critical data isn’t living in traditional files anymore. It’s living in SaaS applications.

Your clients’ entire businesses run on Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce. Customer records, email conversations, project timelines, sales pipelines, collaboration threads. This isn’t just data. It’s the operational nervous system of modern business. And here’s the scary part: 87% of IT professionals reported experiencing SaaS data loss in 2024.

If you’re an MSP or reseller still focusing primarily on file backup, you’re missing the bigger picture. SaaS backup is where the real risk lives, and it’s where your clients need protection most.

The Dangerous Myth About SaaS Data Protection

Let’s start with the biggest misconception in the market: 60% of companies incorrectly assume that their SaaS providers are solely responsible for data protection. Even more concerning, 58% of executives believe Microsoft backs up their SaaS data. They don’t.

Here’s what’s actually happening. When you sign up for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or Salesforce, you’re entering into what’s called a shared responsibility model. The provider is responsible for keeping the infrastructure running and available. You’re responsible for protecting your actual data.

Microsoft says it explicitly in their service agreement: they recommend that you regularly back up the content and data you store on their services using third-party applications. Google says essentially the same thing. So does Salesforce.

What does this mean in practice? If an employee accidentally deletes an important email thread, Microsoft won’t restore it after their limited recovery window expires. If a disgruntled employee wipes out your entire SharePoint site before leaving, that’s on you to recover. If ransomware encrypts your Salesforce data, the cloud provider isn’t liable for helping you get it back.

The statistics bear this out. Malicious deletion was responsible for more than 50% of SaaS data loss incidents in 2024. Accidental deletion or human error accounted for 34% of all data loss. These aren’t theoretical risks. They’re happening every day to businesses that thought their SaaS provider had them covered.

What You’re Actually Protecting in SaaS Environments

When we talk about SaaS backup, we’re not just talking about files. We’re talking about protecting entire business workflows and operational data.

Email and Communication: Email threads, attachments, calendar entries, meeting invitations, task lists, contacts. In Microsoft 365, you’re protecting Teams conversations, channel data, shared files within Teams. According to recent data, 20% of organizations recover emails daily, emphasizing how critical this data is for business continuity.

Collaboration Platforms: SharePoint sites contain entire project workspaces with documents, workflows, permissions, version histories, and metadata. OneDrive stores individual user files with sharing permissions. Losing this data doesn’t just mean losing files. It means losing the entire context of how people were working together.

Business-Critical Applications: Salesforce contains your entire customer relationship history, sales pipelines, custom workflows, automation rules. Losing this data could literally halt your sales operation. The concerning statistic? Only 41% of Salesforce users are using third-party tools to protect this mission-critical data.

Custom Configurations: Every SaaS platform gets customized. Workflows, automation rules, custom fields, integrations, API connections. These configurations took time and expertise to build. They’re not recoverable from the SaaS provider if something goes wrong.

Modern businesses don’t just use SaaS applications to store files. They use them to run operations. Backup strategies need to reflect that reality.

Real Risks Your Clients Are Facing

The threats to SaaS data are more diverse and more common than most people realize.

Human Error Remains the Top Threat: 45% of SaaS data loss is caused by either malicious or accidental deletion. Someone meant to delete one file and selected the wrong folder. Someone thought they were removing old test data and deleted current production information. Once data passes the platform’s limited recovery window, it’s gone without third-party backup.

Internal Threats: 6% of data loss came from intentional deletion by internal parties. Disgruntled employees, departing contractors, compromised accounts. When someone with legitimate access decides to cause damage, they can do significant harm before anyone notices.

External Attacks: 19% of data loss was caused by external parties. Ransomware attacks on SaaS platforms increased 36.7% in 2024. Attackers are getting more sophisticated about targeting cloud environments.

Integration Issues: 30% of businesses experienced data loss from SaaS misconfigurations. Another 30% lost data due to third-party app integrations. When you connect multiple SaaS platforms together, you create potential failure points.

The Financial Impact: The global average cost of a data breach reached $4.88 million in 2024. For healthcare organizations, that number jumped to $9.77 million. Perhaps most alarming: 93% of organizations that experience prolonged data loss lasting 10 days or more go bankrupt within the following year.

Building a SaaS Backup Service Offering

For MSPs and resellers, SaaS backup represents a massive opportunity. 75% of enterprises are expected to prioritize backup of SaaS applications as a critical requirement by 2028. That’s up from just 15% in 2024.

Start with Education: Your first challenge is overcoming the misconception that SaaS data is automatically protected. Create educational content explaining the shared responsibility model. Use real examples of data loss scenarios. Show clients what Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce actually say in their service agreements.

Focus on Business Impact: Don’t lead with storage capacity or retention periods. Lead with business continuity. Ask questions like: How long can your sales team operate without access to Salesforce? What happens if someone accidentally deletes your entire SharePoint site? Frame the conversation around operational risk, not IT features.

Build Tiered Offerings: Not every client needs the same level of protection. A basic tier might offer daily backups with 30-day retention. A premium tier could include hourly backups, unlimited retention, and sub-hour recovery capabilities.

Address Multiple Platforms: Most businesses use several SaaS platforms. Organizations now use an average of 112 SaaS applications. Having a solution that can protect multiple platforms from a single management interface gives you a significant advantage.

Include Testing and Validation: Build regular recovery testing into your service offering. Quarterly restore tests, validation reports, documented recovery procedures. This is the difference between backup and disaster recovery.

What to Look for in a SaaS Backup Solution

The platform you choose determines whether your SaaS backup service is a profit center or a support nightmare. Here are the critical capabilities:

Native Application Support: The solution needs to understand the structure of each SaaS platform, not just back up files. For Microsoft 365, that means backing up Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, OneDrive folders, Teams conversations, and all associated metadata. Generic file backup doesn’t cut it.

Independent Storage: Backups stored in the same cloud as the source data aren’t real backups. Look for solutions that store backups separately from the SaaS platform, ideally in a different cloud provider altogether.

Granular Recovery: Clients need to recover individual emails, specific documents, particular calendar entries. Look for solutions offering item-level recovery with fast search capabilities. If it takes hours to find and restore a single deleted email, your clients won’t be happy.

Automated Policy Enforcement: Set backup policies once and have them apply consistently. Automated scheduling, retention rules, security policies. The solution should enforce these automatically across all protected accounts.

Multi-Tenant Management: For MSPs, you need a platform that lets you manage multiple client environments from a single console. White-label capabilities matter if you want to brand the service as your own.

Security and Compliance: End-to-end encryption, immutable backups that can’t be altered after creation, compliance with relevant regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2. Your clients are trusting you with their most sensitive business data.

Conclusion

The shift to SaaS has fundamentally changed what backup means. It’s no longer about protecting files on servers. It’s about protecting the operational data that keeps businesses running. Email, collaboration workspaces, CRM data, custom configurations. All of it lives in SaaS platforms, and none of it is automatically protected by the providers.

The shared responsibility model is clear: SaaS providers keep the infrastructure running. You’re responsible for protecting the actual data. Yet 60% of companies still don’t understand this, creating a massive education and service opportunity for MSPs.

The risks are real and growing. 87% of IT professionals experienced SaaS data loss in 2024. Ransomware attacks on SaaS increased 36.7%. The average cost of a data breach hit $4.88 million. And 93% of organizations experiencing 10+ days of data loss go bankrupt within a year.

For MSPs and resellers, this represents a significant growth opportunity. The market is expanding rapidly, client awareness is increasing, and the organizations that establish SaaS backup expertise now will capture premium business for years to come.

Start by educating your clients about the shared responsibility model. Build tiered service offerings that match different risk levels and budgets. Choose a backup platform with native SaaS support, independent storage, and granular recovery capabilities. Include regular testing to prove your backups actually work.

At BE In The Cloud, we help MSPs and resellers build comprehensive SaaS backup services that protect what actually matters in modern businesses. Whether you’re backing up Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, or all of the above, we have the platform and expertise to help you deliver real protection to your clients.

Ready to add SaaS backup to your service offerings? Contact us to learn how BE In The Cloud can help you protect your clients’ most critical business data.