Software as a Service (SaaS) hands responsibility for the application and data to the SaaS vendor, but it’s still your data, and you may have things you want to do with it. How can you get access to it?

Reasons to Access SaaS Data

Although the data is being generated and used by the SaaS application, there are many reasons you may want access to the data. These include:

• create reports not available from the SaaS provider
• machine learning, analytics, and artificial intelligence projects
• leverage data in other workflows and applications
• backups, archives, audit trail, and compliance
• respond to legal discovery requests
• review, clean, and correct data

Gaining Access to SaaS Data

There are several different methods you can use to access data.

1. Use the SaaS API.

Some SaaS applications may provide an API to access data. Using this approach requires programming expertise, along with data management skills. You need your own IT infrastructure to run the application and store the downloaded data. In some cases, a separate third-party product may allow you to use the API simply as if it’s a database driver.

2. Leverage data integration toolkits.

There are numerous data integration toolkits providing ETL services. As with using the SaaS API, there may be considerable programming and infrastructure support effort required.

3. Use a SaaS-specific query tool.

For popular SaaS applications, there are third-party connector tools that enable you to query directly against a SaaS application. However, these may use cached data rather than real-time, and may not be efficient for a bulk download.

4. Use a SaaS backup tool.

Using a backup tool ensures you have access to your SaaS data even when the SaaS application isn’t available. It also allows you to access all of your data and deploy it on any platform for any purpose. Some backup tools automatically copy data to cloud storage, while others may require you to set up your own backup storage.

Data Access is Part of Cloud Design

Although SaaS may seem like the simplest choice for getting started with cloud, you still shouldn’t turn over all data management responsibility to the SaaS provider. Making sure you have the appropriate access, protection, and backups for SaaS data requires making your own technology decisions and implementing your own tools and procedures.

Prescient Solutions provides complete cloud services to meet business needs. We support SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS cloud solutions wherever they’re the effective, appropriate technology choice. Contact Prescient Solutions to learn more about why you need to retain ownership of your SaaS data.