‘We started in the lab; we started in a hangar. And we built Slide with a view toward being a total platform for backup, purpose-built for MSPs so we could protect their data wherever it might live,’ says Michael Fass, Slide CEO.
Slide is expanding its backup platform into Microsoft 365, giving MSPs a way to protect SaaS data through the same platform they already use for business continuity and disaster recovery.
The Westport, Conn.-based backup vendor plans to preview its Microsoft 365 backup capabilities to a group of MSP partners at an invite-only summit this week, with a broader release planned for early next year. According to CEO Michael Fass, the move represents the next step in Slide’s strategy to build a unified backup platform around the way MSPs manage data across on-premises and cloud environments.
“The technical architecture upon which the BCDR product was built has other uses,” Fass (pictured) told CRN in an exclusive interview. “MSPs protect data that lives in lots of different places, and so we want to make sure that when we build something, as much of it as possible has applicable uses for other applications.”
[Related: Slide Adds CTO, CISO As MSP Growth Accelerates: Exclusive]
Slide initially focused on BCDR, which Fass said was deliberately chosen because protecting on-premises servers remains one of the more technically difficult problems in backup. The architecture was built from the beginning to accommodate additional workloads, rather than adding separate products through acquisitions or integrations later.
Microsoft 365 was the next logical workload, he said, mostly driven by partner feedback.
“We now have well over 1,000 MSP partners working actively with us,” Carlson Choi, Slide COO, told CRN. “But there is the on-prem server, the workstation, the laptop, the cloud workload like Azure and then there’s cloud email with M365 and Google Suite.”
Slide is putting the Microsoft 365 product through alpha- and beta-testing before making it available early next year.
And for Fass, the demand is straightforward.
“Just about every single MSP that I talk to, they all are asking me, ‘When are you releasing a SaaS backup solution?’” he said. “It seems to be ubiquitous and a universal need across the MSP landscape.”
Rather than treating Microsoft 365 backup as a separate product, the executives said it’s part of a larger platform strategy that lets MSPs search, verify and manage SaaS backups through the same workflows they already use.
“Don’t give me another single sign-on and two different parts smashed together,” Choi said. “It needs to be effectively a platform. We’re a backup company. We’re going to help you back up any digital asset [you have], and we make it easy for you to get there and back it up.”
That focus extends into security and recoverability, with Fass pointing to native end-to-end encryption as a differentiator while the platform also gives MSPs a less manual way to search across protected data and verify that backups are usable.
“The whole thing about the modern workflows is central to how Slide delivers value for MSPs,” Fass said. “If you’re a modern MSP leveraging modern tools, you can stitch all of these best-in-breed tools together using modern workflows and save yourself time, ensure that you’re not making mistakes, save yourself money, be more secure for your end clients and be more responsive.”
For Devaughn Bittle, he sees the biggest benefit not necessarily around selling Microsoft 365 backup as a separate product, but by simplifying how technicians manage protection across customer environments.
“The real advantage for us is going to be ease of managing all of this in a single platform instead of spread over multiple platforms like we have now,” Bittle, president of Frederick, Md.-based CommPutercations, told CRN. “I can’t wait to see all the new features that they add around the product.”
Choi said Slide is building its road map around partner feedback, with MSP needs feeding directly into product development.
“We started in the lab; we started in a hangar,” Fass said. “And we built Slide with a view toward being a total platform for backup, purpose-built for MSPs so we could protect their data wherever it might live.”
