CRM Online and other cloud services take the IT burden from customers and cost-effectively moves it to the cloud. While the savings on IT and hardware are obvious to most users, many customers feel nervous about trusting a third party with their sensitive data. With Scribe Software’s latest product, Scribe Online Replication Services, customers can now have both the ease of cloud-based services and the security of on-site data.

What it Does
Scribe Online’s Replication Services can pull a custom selection of data from either a CRM Online or Salesforce online instance and transfer that data to a local data source. Currently, Scribe Online only supports movement to a SQL Server or SQL Azure in the cloud, however connectivity to other targets though development with Scribe's CDK is an option.  The Replication Services’ 6-step wizard allows easy setup of full database, recommended entity, or hand-picked entity backups to a local data source. These backups can either be performed manually or on an automated schedule, based on selections made in the setup wizard.  

Control of Data
Aside from the security that comes with having frequent backups of sensitive business data, Scribe Online Replication Services also provides a number of other benefits. While cloud services provide convenient and generally reliable access to your business data, any internet-based service has the occasional hiccup. Having a local copy of data will provide access to a recent version of your data even during an infrequent outage.

CRM Online 2011 performs hard deletes. What this means it that when a user selects a record for deletion, the record is not simply flagged and removed from the user interface, as was the case with CRM Online 4.0. Deleted records in CRM Online 2011 are actually purged from the system, with no chance of recovery. The availability of a local backup allows clients to reimport/restore mistakenly deleted records or data.

One of the largest pain points of having one’s data in the cloud is the frustration associated with migration. With Scribe Online Replication Services, a full SQL backup can be available for easy migration from one system or CRM instance to another.

Offline Analytics
While CRM Online 2011 provides its out-of-the-box dashboards, charts, reports, and report wizard, sometimes more complex analytics are desirable. The ability to keep an updated SQL mirror of live data on hand gives your organization the flexibility of SSRS reporting, including the powerful SSRS report builder for creating professional-looking reports with the ease of a point-and-click interface. Having your data on a local SQL database also allows for mixed queries with external data sources and the use of 3^rd-party analytics software such as Good Data.

Offline Data Cleanup
Anyone who’s tried data scrubbing CRM data on a large scale knows that sometimes out-of-the-box tools simply aren’t flexible or efficient enough. With a working copy of business data on a local SQL server, system administrators have the freedom of large-scale SQL scripting to clean data. Also, more complicated duplicate detection/resolution measures can be taken with a convenient copy of the data at hand.

Flexible Pricing
Scribe Online provides a number of pricing options, accommodating a customer’s needs. The Starter package provides the necessary backup functionality for small businesses needing to keep an on-hand backup, whereas Standard and Premium packages provide additional functionality such as multiple solutions, entity selection and automated replication.

More to Come
Scribe Online’s Replication Services are only the first of Scribe Software’s Online Services. Coming in Q4 is Scribe’s Synchronization Services, and slated for 2012 is Scribe Online Integration Services.

Note: Article has been updated for accuracy (10/19/2011)