Google has announced a new disaster recovery feature in Google Apps - synchronous data replication which is the real-time replication of data in multiple servers and data centers. This will allow every piece of data that is entered or changed to be backed up in almost real time to ensure a full disaster recovery. While this feature has been used for the past few years in Gmail, Google has now extended it to include all applications within the Google Apps portfolio. This news may help many make the decision to move towards cloud based recovery versus on-premise back up.

Users can still use tools such as LTech’s Google Docs tool to backup on Amazon S3 or local file system to ensure access regardless of internet connectivity. Follow the link to the tool here: http://www.ltech.com/google-apps/products/google-docs-backup

Read the full announcement on the Official Google Enterprise Blog. http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/disaster-recovery-by-google.html