Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace now hold some of the most important data in the business: contracts, customer communications, financial records, legal documents, employee files, project history, and day-to-day work.
But many organizations still protect SaaS data differently from the rest of the environment. They rely on native retention, recycle bins, version history, legal holds, or manual exports and assume that is enough.
That assumption creates risk. When ransomware encrypts synced OneDrive files, a SharePoint site is overwritten, a former employee’s data is needed for legal review, or storage growth triggers another budget conversation, native recovery alone may not provide the control, speed, or auditability the business expects.
Gartner’s 2026 Market Guide for SaaS Backup reflects this shift. SaaS backup is moving from an optional add-on to a Tier 1 data protection requirement. According to Gartner, by 2029, 75% of enterprises will treat SaaS application backup as a critical Tier 1 component of their data protection strategy, up from 40% in 2026.
For IT leaders, the practical question is not whether Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace are reliable platforms. It is whether the organization has an independent, resilient, searchable, and recoverable copy of the business data inside them.
Availability Is Not Recoverability
SaaS providers do a strong job of keeping their platforms available. But platform availability and enterprise recoverability are not the same thing.
Native recovery tools can help with basic short-term scenarios, especially accidental deletion. They are less reliable when ransomware affects synced files, when a SharePoint site needs to be restored to a known-good state, when legal teams need data after native retention windows close, or when IT needs former-employee data without keeping a Microsoft 365 license active indefinitely.
That is why SaaS backup is becoming part of the broader data resilience conversation. Organizations need point-in-time restore, policy-based retention, auditability, eDiscovery support, legal hold, archiving, secure backup storage, and consistent management across the environment.
The Cost Side Matters Too
SaaS backup is not only about restoring deleted files. In Microsoft 365 environments, data growth can quickly become a budget problem, especially across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange.
Keeping everything in production, Microsoft 365 storage is not always the most efficient long-term strategy. As data grows, IT teams need a way to preserve information for business, legal, and compliance needs without relying on active collaboration storage as the sole long-term repository.
Indiana University is a strong example. By archiving 2 PB of Microsoft 365 data with CrashPlan, IU avoided a projected $688K in Microsoft storage expenses in year one and established a long-term strategy for managing data growth across OneDrive and SharePoint.
That kind of outcome connects data protection to measurable cost control. For IT leaders, the value is not just “we can recover files.” It is also “we can reduce storage pressure, support retention needs, and defend the budget impact to leadership.”
Native Recovery Is Not Enterprise Backup
Many organizations still assume native SaaS retention is enough. That usually comes from confusing related but different capabilities:
- Retention is not backup.
- Version history is not point-in-time recovery.
- Recycle bins are not long-term resilience.
- Legal hold is not operational restore.
- Platform uptime is not data recoverability.
Native tools have a role, but they are not designed to replace an independent backup and archiving strategy. They may not provide the recovery depth, administrative control, long-term retention, or separation needed for enterprise recovery, compliance, and ransomware resilience.
The gap becomes visible when a department needs a SharePoint site restored to its state before a large overwrite, when the legal team needs data from a former employee, or when a finance folder is deleted and not noticed until after the native recovery window has passed. In those moments, IT needs a recoverable copy it controls.
Gartner’s SaaS Backup Recommendations Should Shape the Evaluation
Gartner recommends evaluating SaaS backup based on required application coverage, recovery capabilities, and operational consistency across the SaaS environment, rather than selecting tools based on individual SaaS platforms. Gartner also recommends assessing granular recovery, metadata protection, and large-scale recovery operations, and validating how SaaS provider APIs and platform limitations affect coverage, restore workflows, and restore consistency.
That guidance moves the conversation beyond “Does this tool support Microsoft 365?” The better evaluation is whether the solution can protect the data the business relies on, recover it at the right level of detail, preserve the context around it, scale when recovery gets messy, and give IT a consistent way to manage the work.
Gartner also recommends validating recovery workflows and performance through regular testing. A SaaS backup strategy is only useful if the organization knows what can be restored, how quickly, what metadata and permissions are preserved, and where provider API limitations may affect recovery.
The SaaS Backup Market Is Fragmented
The Gartner Market Guide also points to an important reality for buyers. The SaaS backup market is fragmented.
Some vendors compete on broad SaaS application coverage. Others go deeper into specific business-critical applications. Some focus on backup and restore, while others extend into archiving, compliance, configuration protection, data lifecycle management, or adjacent governance use cases.
Application coverage matters, but coverage alone is not enough. A long list of supported SaaS applications does not automatically mean a solution can support the recovery, retention, security, and governance scenarios an enterprise actually faces.
For many organizations, the evaluation starts with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. These platforms contain a high concentration of business-critical data and are often where accidental deletions, ransomware exposure, storage growth, compliance requests, and offboarding challenges first become visible.
Where CrashPlan Fits
CrashPlan is listed in Gartner’s Market Guide as a representative vendor for SaaS and non-SaaS backup workloads, including Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Gartner’s representative vendor listing is intended to provide market context and is not an exhaustive list, product assessment, ranking, or endorsement.
CrashPlan’s capabilities align with many of the evaluation areas that Gartner identifies as important for SaaS backup buyers.
CrashPlan helps organizations protect SaaS data alongside endpoint and server data while supporting recovery, retention, archiving, governance, and storage control. Enterprise data sits across Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, endpoints, servers, and other business systems. Separate tools and inconsistent policies can create operational gaps and make recovery harder when time matters.
For Microsoft 365 environments, CrashPlan helps protect data in SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive using SaaS-provider supported APIs. It also supports Google Workspace data protection, giving organizations a way to manage SaaS recovery as part of a broader data protection strategy rather than as a disconnected point solution.
How CrashPlan Maps to Gartner-Identified SaaS Backup Capabilities
Application coverage and operational consistency. Gartner recommends evaluating required application coverage, recovery capabilities, and operational consistency across the SaaS environment. CrashPlan supports Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace protection and provides IT with a centralized platform to manage SaaS, endpoint, and server protection.
Granular and point-in-time recovery. Gartner identifies granular recovery and point-in-time recovery as important SaaS backup capabilities. CrashPlan supports point-in-time recovery for Microsoft 365 data, including files, folders, emails, drives, and SharePoint sites, so IT can restore exactly what is needed without restoring more than necessary.
Policy-driven retention and centralized management. Gartner calls out backup frequency, scope, retention policies, centralized configuration, monitoring, and operational visibility. CrashPlan supports policy-driven retention and centralized administration across supported workloads, helping reduce policy inconsistency and administrative friction.
Backup data resilience. Gartner recommends assessing how backup data is protected through access controls, encryption, immutability, and logical isolation. CrashPlan supports resilient backup storage, immutable backups, and security controls designed to help preserve backup integrity and reduce the risk of unauthorized deletion, tampering, or modification.
Metadata, role-based access, and governance. Gartner identifies metadata protection, permissions, role-based access, self-service recovery, search, investigation, eDiscovery, auditability, and governance support as important areas of evaluation or differentiation. CrashPlan supports recovery scenarios that help preserve important Microsoft 365 context, as well as role-based administration, self-serve recovery, audit, legal hold, eDiscovery, archiving, and long-term retention.
Where CrashPlan Goes Beyond Baseline SaaS Backup
Meeting baseline SaaS backup requirements is important. But many organizations also need to manage storage growth, preserve former employee data, support compliance investigations, reduce dependence on expensive primary storage, and control where backup and archive data is stored.
That is where some of Gartner’s optional capability areas become especially relevant, including customer-managed storage, bring-your-own-storage models, region-specific storage, role-based access, search and investigation, reporting, analytics, and data archiving.
CrashPlan’s Microsoft 365 archiving and data lifecycle management capabilities help organizations retain data for long-term business and compliance needs while also helping reduce Microsoft 365 storage pressure. Archiving gives IT teams a more deliberate way to preserve data without relying on production SaaS storage as the sole long-term repository.
Archiving also matters for employee offboarding. When employees leave, organizations often need to retain their data for business continuity, investigations, legal, or compliance purposes. A searchable archive gives organizations another path: remove the former employee’s access, preserve the data, and make it available to the right people when needed.
CrashPlan also gives organizations flexibility in where backup and archive data is stored. Customers can use bundled storage options, including Azure storage or CrashPlan data center storage, and CrashPlan also supports bring-your-own-storage models across a range of cloud and object storage destinations. That flexibility can help organizations address cost, operational preference, data sovereignty, and regulatory requirements.
Questions IT Leaders Should Ask When Evaluating SaaS Backup
Gartner’s recommendations point buyers toward a more complete evaluation than application coverage alone. They also reinforce the need to establish ownership for SaaS data protection, retention, and recovery across IT, security, application, governance, risk, and compliance stakeholders.
Practical questions include:
- Who owns SaaS data protection, retention, recovery, and archive policies across IT, security, legal, compliance, and application teams?
- Which SaaS applications are business-critical enough to require independent backup?
- Can the solution restore Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace data to a known good point in time?
- Can IT recover individual files, folders, drives, mailboxes, and SharePoint sites without restoring more than necessary?
- How do SaaS provider API limits affect backup coverage, metadata preservation, recovery performance, and restore consistency?
- Can the solution support large-scale recovery operations, not just small item restores?
- Can the organization preserve former employee data and search archived data without keeping licenses active indefinitely?
- Can backup data be protected from unauthorized deletion, tampering, or modification?
- Can SaaS, endpoint, and server backup be managed from a centralized platform?
- Can the solution help reduce Microsoft 365 storage pressure and support long-term cost control?
- Can the organization prove recovery readiness through logs, policies, testing, and repeatable restore workflows?
These questions matter because the goal is not simply to buy another backup tool. The goal is to reduce business risk, recover faster, support compliance, control costs, and avoid adding unnecessary work for IT.
Assess Your SaaS Recovery and Archive Gaps
The Gartner Market Guide reinforces where the market is headed, but the issue is already here. SaaS data is business-critical data and deserves protection that matches its importance.
As more enterprises treat SaaS backup as a Tier 1 requirement, IT leaders should take a closer look at how Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace fit into their broader recovery, retention, archiving, and governance strategies.
CrashPlan helps organizations protect SaaS, endpoint, and server data while supporting the recovery depth, retention flexibility, archiving, governance, storage options, and cost control that enterprises increasingly need.
Source: Gartner, Market Guide for SaaS Backup, Sankalp Rastogi, 1 June 2026, ID G00855806.
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