Knowledge Base

SkyKick - Cloud Backup Overview

SkyKick Cloud Backup, provided by Cloud Direct, is a cloud-to-cloud backup application that offers unlimited backup, lightning-fast search, and one-click restore of your customer's Office 365 email, calendar, and contacts, and OneDrive and SharePoint files.

What makes SkyKick Cloud Backup different from other Backup solutions?

The SkyKick Cloud Backup service was created to provide customers the insurance they need to know their data is protected. There are several key differences that SkyKick Cloud Backup has compared to other solutions out there:

  • Easy Setup: No machine prerequisites and nothing to install: Auto-discovery of mailboxes, SharePoint sites and OneDrive for Business accounts makes setup and subscribing a snap.
  • Fast Search, One-click restore: Find lost data lightning-fast, and restore to their original location with a single click. Permissions respected, and no file overwrites.
  • Unlimited backup for a fixed cost: Six snapshots daily. No data caps or overages for Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive for Business.
  • Unlimited retention: No matter how long you need data backed up, SkyKick Cloud Backup does it for one fixed price.
  • Automatically add to backup: SkyKick Cloud Backup by default will automatically add new mailboxes and SharePoint/OneDrive users. Or, you can choose to be alerted to new users and add as desired.
  • Self-Service Portal: Customers can access the SkyKick Self-Service Portal where they can perform the search and restore themselves.

Why do businesses need a backup solution for their data in the cloud?

Office 365 offers Geo-redundancy to protect against data loss related to a data centre event by mirroring data across multiple data centres. However, that doesn't protect against data loss events not related to a data centre, as those data losses are mirrored across the multiple data centres. Office 365 Archiving and other features further protect data, but require expertise, additional cost, and time to recover data. And when the data is recovered, it is often unstructured. Therefore, a backup solution is needed to provide a quick, seamless way to restore lost data exactly as it was and where it was so employees can get back on track and stay productive.

How is backup different than Disaster Recovery?

For many businesses, a backup solution is the right size for their need to restore lost data and stay productive. While a backup solution doesn't offer many of the features covered by a complete Disaster Recovery solution (i.e. on-premises servers, PBX, CRM/ERP, etc.), it does solve the crucial piece of backing up data. So, if data is lost, it can be quickly found and restored to exactly where it's needed.

Unsupported SKUs and Configurations

SkyKick Cloud Backup supports the majority of Microsoft Office 365 SKUs containing Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive for Business. While Cloud Backup is designed to support common configurations of Office 365, there can be configurations of Office 365 that may fall outside the scope of Cloud Backup support. These are:

  • The standalone version of OneDrive for Business (Plan 1) is configured in a way that prevents the Cloud Backup service from being able to identify and back up data. Therefore, that specific SKU is not currently supported by Cloud Backup.
  • Cloud Backup for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business requires access to the SharePoint Admin Service of the Office 365 tenant. If a hoster does not provide this access, Cloud Backup cannot back up SharePoint sites or OneDrive for Business accounts.
  • Cloud Backup requires PowerShell access. Therefore, because legacy Office 365 Small Business tenants do not support this capability, they cannot be accessed by Cloud Backup for full functionality.

Supported Browsers

While the product may work with other browsers/versions, it is specifically designed to support the following:

Partner-Facing Pages (Partner Portal and where partners log in)

  • Chrome: Latest Version
  • Firefox: Latest Version
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Safari: Latest Version

Customer-Facing Pages (e.g. Self-Service pages)

  • Chrome: Latest Version
  • Firefox: Latest Version
  • Internet Explorer 8 and above
  • Safari: Latest Version