Webinar: Why DevOps-centric teams choose Gearset

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Description

Join Aga Peryie, Senior Product Manager at Gearset, and Mohammed Nadeem, Senior Release Engineer at Qlik, as they discuss the importance of Salesforce backup solutions in the DevOps lifecycle. Discover how Gearset’s integrated backup capabilities empower teams to deliver reliable software changes.

  • Understand the role of backups in the DevOps process
  • Learn why Gearset stands out in the market
  • Hear a live case study from Qlik on their backup journey with Gearset
  • Explore how effective backup strategies enhance team resilience and creativity

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Transcript

So good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, everyone, depending on where you you're joining us from.

And welcome to today's webinar and a live case study session where we will explore why DevOps centric teams choose Gearset and discuss backups in a wider DevOps life cycle context.

Before we get started, a quick introduction.

So hello again. I'm Aga. I'm one of the senior product managers here at Gearset, and I look after our backup and archiving solutions. And I am joined today by Nadim, a senior release engineer at Qlik and one of our esteemed Gear Set DevOps leaders. Nadim, thank you so much for joining us.

In terms of today's agenda, we will start by taking you for a quick introduction to DevOps life cycle, where in the life cycle a backup solution fits in, and how Gearset backup is different to other solutions on the market. Then we will move on to a live case study session with Nadim to learn more why his team looked for a backup solution and what made them choose Gearset.

So let's get started with the DevOps life cycle.

DevOps life cycle is not a Gearset's creation. It's a well established visualization of the DevOps in the wider world of software engineering.

The life cycle shows how development and operations form one coherent process, and the infinity symbolism represents continuous delivery with iterative releases creating a tight feedback loop.

The band around the life cycle adds some essentials that aren't limited to any one stage, and optimizing for the whole life cycle reduces the cost of delivery.

Success isn't really measured by the speed of individual stages, but performance across the whole cycle so that each stage should reduce work later in the cycle.

This is the idea of shifting left. And though I appreciate and might not be super intuitive when looking at the loop, what we basically mean is that most issues should be fixed well ahead of release and let alone before reaching production.

And you've heard me mention DevOps centric teams. But what does this actually mean?

Well, a DevOps centric Salesforce team embodies a culture and a set of practices that tightly integrate DevOps functions throughout the entire Salesforce life cycle. So instead of traditional silos, these teams are more collaborative and cross functional, focused on delivering value faster, more reliably, and with higher quality.

And here at Gearset, we believe that all team members, regardless of their role, should collaborate and take shared responsibility for the whole life cycle.

And any repeatable steps should be automated for speed and accuracy, freeing up the team to focus on their most impactful work.

So why should DevOps centric teams choose Gearset?

Well, when it comes to DevOps, we at Gearset get it. Gearset was built by DevOps experts that have worked with thousands of Salesforce teams, and it is the only solution built on DevOps best practices.

Gearset has been carefully designed to have everything you need across the entire DevOps life cycle to deliver high quality changes more quickly, reliably, and securely than ever before while integrating with your existing enterprise tooling.

And speaking speaking of enterprise, Gearset is the leading DevOps platform for enterprise scale Salesforce teams, delivering powerful features across the entire dev development life cycle, including integrated backup and archiving.

Gearset is designed to handle complex workflows with ease, and it combines advanced capability with intuitive usability, making it ideal for teams of all sizes.

We also help you stay audio ready with automated processes and detailed tracking that support your compliance and governance standards.

And this includes Gear Sets backup, which we build for enterprise scale reliability, performance, and security.

So we provide automated daily backups with optional high frequency hourly backups covering both your data and metadata.

So everything is encrypted and stored off platform for maximum resilience and also so that your data is always available to you, easy to download.

And unlike some legacy backup solutions, Gearset offers modern integrated technology that combines backup with industrial leading DevOps tooling, giving you greater control, visibility, and ease of use.

Oh, and if you're worried about setup, I am happy to tell you that Gearset is a fully cloud based solution, so there's nothing to install in your Salesforce org. This keeps setup simple and quick, so you can literally get your backup up and running within minutes for immediate peace of mind. There's no ongoing maintenance, and we update our platform. Like, we update our platform. Sorry. So there is nothing for you to upgrade, and being off platform also ensures your environment remains uncluttered.

Many folks think of backup as an insurance policy, but we believe it does more than that. A backup solution, good backup solution, means a good restore solution. It means you can recover quickly and reliably.

And restoring with Gearset is simple, fast, and familiar.

You use the same intuitive comparison and deployment workflow trusted by thousands of Salesforce teams. So whether you're rolling back metadata, recovering lost check rec lost records, or fixing accidental changes, it feels like second nature. And our support team is there to help you build your disaster recovery process to make sure running through restore feels like riding a bike.

With full visibility into every change, you can pinpoint exactly what to restore from individual records to full objects or metadata components and deploy the fix in just a few clicks. There's no need to switch tools or learn new processes, making recovery quick and low risk.

So why is easy and reliable restore so important for DevOps centric teams?

Well, this is something we thought about a lot. Why should devs care about backup?

Something that actually Nadim, who we will hear from in a moment, told me recently was that backup creates resilience, and resilience creates creativity.

Because when backup is more than an afterthought or a tick box exercise, but when it becomes a critical part of delivering reliable, secure releases, It gives your team the confidence to try new things.

And here at Gearset, one of our core values is delivery over deliberation.

But we know that's something only that possible when you have a reliable recovery process in place.

And with backup built into your DevOps process, you can ship confidently and recover quickly when the unexpected happens.

Gearset understands and protects your Salesforce data and metadata and gives your team the agility to bounce back fast when disaster strikes.

And backing up everything that matters to your DevOps process goes beyond just the production environment, but also includes your sandboxes.

Our people use sandboxes for testing changes all the time, and as we know, they are costly to refresh.

But with an integrated backup solution, you can quickly fix your sandbox without running that lengthy and expensive refresh process.

So instead, you can simply revert your changes and restore your data, enabling you and your team to be more creative to try new solutions to a problem and to experiment.

Additionally, our sandbox seeding enables your team to test with real right data while keeping it compliant with our data masking.

Additionally to our backup and sandbox seeding solution, we also offer archiving, which supports your DevOps life cycle further.

Archiving not only key helps you keep your org storage lean and your costs down, but these days, we've all heard about agent force. And agents need good data.

But what do we mean by good data?

Well, the simple definition would be the relevant and up to date data. And our archiving solution enables you to clean up your org while staying compliant by moving the old data out of your Salesforce and into the archive. The data is still accessible when you need it, and if you need to view it outside of Gearset, we also have an archive viewer for that.

Now when it comes to pricing, here at Gearset, we keep it simple and transparent.

Our pricing is based on a predictable number of Salesforce users in your org with no hidden costs or confusing usage tiers.

We know storage usage can spike unexpectedly as you roll out new features or scale your org, and Gear Sets per user pricing makes budgeting simple and predictable without the stress of calculating data volumes or planning around fluctuating storage costs. We will even help you keep your storage costs down with our archiving solution.

So to summarize it, Gearset is a fully integrated Salesforce DevOps platform that includes a robust enterprise grade backup and recovery solution.

It's designed for teams who need confidence in their data protection strategy.

Gearset's backup offering safeguards your both your data and metadata.

It supports rapid recovery and fits seamlessly into your DevOps workflows.

And we truly believe it is an integral part of our customer's journey into production.

And unlike stand alone tools, Gearset provides everything in one place, from automated deployments to CICD pipelines, chain monitoring, testing, sandbox seeding, archiving, and backup with disaster recovery.

Our Unifruit platform simplifies operations, reduces risks, and gives you complete control over every aspect of your DevOps life cycle.

But don't just take my word for it. We'll move on to the live case study session. Let me just stop sharing my screen.

Nadine, thank you so much for joining us here today.

Before we get started with questions, could you tell us more about yourself?

First of all, thank you very much for having me, Aga. Thank you for nicely explaining the importance of data backup and why it is important for DevOps centric teams. So I am Nadeem. I am senior release engineer at Qlik, and I am also one of the DevOps leaders for two thousand twenty five. And I'm here to share what we actually think about data backup and why Gearset was our choice of product.

Thank you. So could you start by telling us more about why did your team start looking for a backup solution?

Well, thank you for ask for asking this very important question. I have two answers for this one. One, the short answer, and then one is the long answer. Let me start with the short answer.

Data backup is nonnegotiable for for us. So that is the short answer. The long answer is any company where Salesforce is at the center of their business, also known as if the Salesforce application is their mission critical application, then data backup should be one of the one of the critical assets within their overall Salesforce org because the loss of data recovery and suffering the data loss could be catastrophic for companies like wherever Salesforce is mission critical application. And we were we are one of the Salesforce customer where Salesforce is mission critical application.

So we can't do the maths if there is any huge data loss. That's where the team decided. And thanks to our incredible leadership, our especially our a special shout out to to my CIO, Mike Gibo, who actually understood the vision and the importance of having a backup, solution within our Salesforce org. That's where we we actually managed to get into.

Thank you.

That's great. That's, thank you for highlighting the the value of it. And, can you tell us more about what may you choose Gearset?

Yeah. That's an interesting one. So there are two parts of the answer. One, if you are existing Gearset customer, if you are not a Gearset customer.

So if you are a guess existing Gearset customer, then there is no other reason you should go outside Gearset. Why? Because Gearset has expanded not just as a DevOps tool rather than into a DevOps ecosystem in itself. You just name it.

You have compare and deploy where you can do all to our deployment. As a starting point, you have a complete CICD solution in the form of pipelines. You have code reviews with AI in integrated. You have observability where you can observe your orgs, no health with specifically for flows and epics.

And when it comes to backup, it's already integrated. So you don't have to worry about going outside gear set, worry about training the team to a specific tool, handling the logistics, not talking to the vendor who is different. And, also, most importantly, Gear Sets metadata intelligence layer within the backup, solution. That is crucial for you to decide why you should go with Gear Set.

Because it's it's proprietary algorithm which acts behind the scene is is absolutely game changer for us.

Thank you so much for saying all that.

You mentioned a moment ago how, you know, it was thanks to your CIO who understood the value of, of backup that you chose it. So can you, like, what would you recommend that, you know, or what would you expect leaders to be asking their teams, you know, about backup and restore beyond just, like, do we have it? Is it on? Like, what value should they be asking their teams about?

Absolute that's a great question. I mean, if I look back, backup is largely one of the most underrated and yet very crucial concepts within the Salesforce ecosystem.

And we know that Salesforce is the shared responsibility model, then it's obviously if if if data is crucial, if you want to have a robust data management or data or recovery policy, you have to think about a system which can handle the complexities of Salesforce's weird metadata and and no data architecture.

Now when it comes to how how we can motivate, it's very important that we understand we should understand not every object's records is same. As an example, for for company like us, our invoices and quotes are way more crucial than internal travel request approval, for example. Right? So a company like us cannot imagine or it can be catastrophic for any data loss within invoices or quotes or orders, for example.

Right? So I think this can be a motivating point for any company to think about, even even challenge their current notion that why backup is important. We know that gear Salesforce itself offers a native solution to restore, which comes with additional cost of ten thousand dollar. But the matter of fact is they just give you a CSV file.

You need to apply the magic if you are a wizard. Otherwise, you will be struggling to just read those CSV files, and it sometimes take weeks to restore. But when it when it comes to real time, no data loss, time is the most important factor here. You need to understand the recovery time objective, how quickly you can recover from a data loss.

And I think that's where a tool like Gearset is play can play a very crucial role. You can plan your recovery time objective based on your business needs.

And recovery, backup and recovery should be part of your business continuity plan.

It should be part of that.

Great. Thank you for supporting that, sir. And can you tell me more about what impact it could have on the business when a good backup strategy is in place, but also on, you know, of teams of devs and admins that deal with Salesforce on a daily basis?

Yep.

One of the points you have already mentioned that, you know, it it all boils down to, resilience. When you have resilience in your in your team, when they have when they are confident that, okay. If anything goes bad, we always have a time machine to go back and restore. Right? That's one aspect of it. How we if you if you add the QA angle in this one, then there is a very good point which one of our DevOps advocates here at Click mentioned, just few few days ago, Fraser. He mentioned that but a a solution like backup can enable QA team.

Imagine if you have a testing requirement where where you are manipulating data heavily. Right? And you are risking your full copy sandbox, and refreshing full copy sandbox can be daunting for companies like us. It takes days to bring back the environment on online. What if we have a solution where we can use it as a time machine and we can always go back and restore. Right? So it gives this flexibility.

So if you do the math, it's always cheaper to have a backup solution, and, also, it enables the team to experiment more.

And if we build on a point of, like, how you said, like, it saves time, like, what could the teams do with the the extra time saved from, you know, not having to refresh the sandbox?

Exactly. They can they can experiment with the with the with the ideas they which they never got time to actually experiment.

So, yeah, it always as you mentioned before, it always goes down to creativity. You are resilient. It enables the creativity.

Great. Thank you. Do you have any advice for anyone who is, like, maybe thinking of, you know, partnering with Kearsall, with working with Kearsall? You share a bit what your experience has been with us so far?

And Absolutely.

Yeah. That that that that's my favorite part, actually. So when it comes to, my recommendation, there are two parts of it. When you when you're planning about a backup solution, start thinking about high level, like, your high level strategies rather than thinking about a specific product.

Make sure you have a regular testing strategy then validating your backup and restores. And it's one of the most important part. Why I should recommend Gearset is it's easy nature to build the backup jobs. I I mean, literally within five to ten clicks, you can build the backup jobs.

So that's that's something which set apart GearSet compared to any other solution. I mean, also, the unique thing about GearSet is GearSet ties the backup for data with the metadata itself. So you don't have to worry about backing up your metadata outside data backup. So it's tied down with the data backup itself.

So that's one thing. And, also, if you're existing customer, then the familiar UI will not make you feel that you are using something new. It's it it makes you, it feels it it feels like home view. It feels like it's the same tool, but different, you know, layout.

And for any customer any any any any Salesforce user who is thinking about Gasset, I would highly recommend. Their support team is awesome.

They are hungry for feedback. It's not just they listen to the feedback. They they have the the potential to actually execute it. And we, any enterprise customer, can also think about building a strategic relationship with Gearset. And when you manage to build that, you can very well influence the road map because Gearset listens well. This is one of their USPs. They listens well.

Yes. We we do love feedback. We're, like you said, very, very hungry for it, and, thank you for that wonderful feedback.

You mentioned how, you know, having that data and metadata in one job is is helpful. Can you talk me for, like, what kind of impact it might have on, you know, I'm I'm guessing, for example, on every store Yep. Like, that's where you feel it lost?

That that that's a very, very good question. Why? Because there are bunch of backup solutions.

They offer only data backup, but they don't offer the metadata backup. They want you to take care of it, metadata backup. And we know the the nature of Salesforce. It's it's purely tied to the metadata.

If, let's say, if you if you lose your your field, for example, or if there is any loss in your pick list, then you can't imagine to restore. Right? That's how Salesforce is. It's weird. We know that. That's why it's very important that your data backup is tied with a metadata backup because metadata act as a container, and your data is just, elements in that container. So you can't imagine to have your your stuffs in a broken container.

That's very true. Thank you. And, you know, you you'd understand that metadata implications because you you work with Salesforce on a daily basis. But how would you recommend teams balance that ownership of who should be the owner of the backup? Is it the people who interact with Salesforce and, you know, make changes in it on a daily basis?

How how do you balance that with the needs of the business? Do you have any advice there?

Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's a good question. When it comes to who owns the backup, it's definite when it comes to building the backup solutions, it's definitely a joint venture between the business team and the, you know, the the technological team. But who owns it? It's definitely it depends, like, how the company has their team. Some companies have a set of, a team like platform team who owns all the shared environments.

Some companies have a dedicated production support team who owns the production environment.

Some some companies are different. Right? So but the fundamental things remain same, business and the technological team. So they both share the responsibility to own the backup job. Because at the time of restore, the business tells you that, okay, what are the crucial objects they need immediately? They need it as safe as possible.

But you as a technical guy, a technical team knows the nuances of Salesforce. So you know what fields to make sure it's it's there, what objects should be there so that the relationship is not broken, which which object connects one to one, one to many. So you know those things, not the business. So it's a collaborative venture between the business and the technological team.

Right answer. Thank you very much.

We have a question in each other. I just see from Alejandro whether our, backup supports GDPR removal of records from the backups. And, yes, yes, it does.

Yeah. Absolutely. Not just GDPR. You can also have your encryption. Like, you can bring your own key. That's one of the great thing, about Gayset.

You can also have HIPAA. Right?

So not just GP, GDPR.

Sorry. I took I I hijacked you. I hijacked your answer.

Yeah.

It's good. It's good to know that our customers, you know, know our solution is so good. It just again, it's another proof of this partnership. Right? We the feedback goes both ways, and we like to make sure that our our customers feel confident in you know, that they understand our solution. So that just makes me very happy. Thank you.

Great.

Sorry. I lost my train of thought for a second there.

Yeah. No worries. I I think I have a point to mention here. Okay. I think for for the companies, right, where Salesforce is at the center of their business, I think there are only two types of customers.

One, who talk about or think about backup solution once they suffer a data loss are they are fall forward thinker who know the importance of data backup, and they they start talking about it. They start talking about it. So my recommendation is be the later, not the first.

Yes. Yes. It's, it might be sometimes a bit more difficult to persuade your business that it's worth the investment. But when you do the mouse, it definitely will show how how it's valuable to have a backup solution in place. You don't want to do it after you've suffered the disaster for sure.

Exactly. And it's as I as I told as I mentioned before, it's the nature of the Salesforce platform. Salesforce is very clear that they are a shared responsibility model.

They take care of the infrastructure behind the scene, and you are responsible. You, the customer, is responsible for their data and metadata.

So I think backup should backup not should be. In fact, must be an integral part of your sales facade.

Start talking about it. Start challenging your current notion. If then if they don't listen to you, show them the statistics. Right? If you follow the state of Salesforce do ops report of twenty twenty five, there are eighty seven percent customers already talking about it.

So it's either today or tomorrow, it but it will be.

Yes. Definitely. Yeah. I'm glad to hear you read the report as well. We're very proud of it.

So we are the second one.

Yeah.

Brilliant. Brilliant.

And then, you've you mentioned, you know, that partnership. This is something that we're very proud of of our support team, of how much feedback we take on. Could you share more about your experience of maybe raising anything with our support team that you saw that was, you know, that an action was taken and then you saw it come to fruition?

Yeah. Absolutely. There are a number of examples which I can take. I think we need a dedicated session on how we how we how we get to know resolution or how we interact with GESIT support.

Anyway, but there are a number of example, but I I would definitely highlight some. So one of the as I mentioned, one of the USPs of GESIT is their support team's rapid execution of customer's feedback. It's just it not just you you they'll you listen to the feedback. In fact, you work up on that, and you understand the importance of and the nature of the crit the, you know, criticality of of the feedback which the customer has shared.

And there are several instances where Gearset listens to us, and they actually implemented our our issue within one to two weeks, which is tremendous.

Yes. That's great to hear. Yes. It's, I remember when I first joined the company and I found out about our twice daily releases, and even I was shocked.

So, but, I mean, really glad it's appreciated.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It should be shock for for people who are still using changes. I mean, can we imagine?

But it's it thank you, Aga. I really want to thank you and the team for talking about it. We'd need more people like you to challenge it in the ecosystem, why we should talk about and we need, a backup solution.

Thank you so much, Nadine.

Thank you so much for your time and for talking to us today and sharing your experience. It's it's been a pleasure chatting to you.

Thanks a lot, Alan. Thank you very much you. The whole team.

Thank you. And and to everyone out there that's listening, if if you liked what you heard today, if you would like to find out more, you can scan this QR code to book some time with our wonderful support team. And, or you can always reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. I'm sure to Nadim as well. Thais, thank you so much for your time, everyone, today, and, and for your questions in the chat as well. We hope to hear from you soon.

Perfect. Thanks. Thank you everyone who joined.