Microsoft 365 Backup

Why Microsoft 365 Backup?

Microsoft 365 (sometimes referred to as O365) is a popular SaaS (solution-as-a-service) offering for today’s businesses. With Microsoft 365, end users and organizations get a robust suite of productivity tools, which include Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams among others.  As opposed to conventional licensing and usage models for these applications, Microsoft 365 is hosted in the cloud, making it available anytime, anywhere – without the hassle of installing or maintaining these services.

And while Microsoft manages the physical infrastructure and network elements of Microsoft 365, customers must be aware of their own responsibilities. Specifically, their role in protecting their data living with the suite of Microsoft 365 solutions.

Like many SaaS providers, Microsoft follows a shared responsibility model for Microsoft 365. This means, as a hosted service, Microsoft owns the application. They take responsibility and ownership of maintaining the underlying architecture, which includes security, reliability, and accessibility of Microsoft 365 applications (and its functions). In doing so, Microsoft delivers a highly robust and capable SaaS platform that meets the productivity needs of many organizations.

The customer, however, is responsible for their own data residing in Microsoft 365 – making M365 backup and recovery a critical component in safeguarding business data. Microsoft 365 backup is proven to both safeguard emails, messages, files, etc… living in Microsoft 365 production environments, but also deleted customer data that is no longer accessible to users.

For this reason, Microsoft recommends third-party, dedicated protection, for long-term extended coverage of Microsoft 365 data, found in Microsoft 365 backup solutions.

Why dedicated protection with Microsoft 365 backup?

Some believe replication controls Microsoft offers natively provides the same-level of control and coverage as dedicated M365 backup and recovery. However, these native controls are not built for extended, long term data retention. Here is how dedicated, third-party solutions comprehensively protect data, while helping meet recovery SLAs:

Data Loss

Data loss comes in many shapes and sizes, and no one is immune. With dedicated protection, customers get immutable, virtual air-gapped coverage with robust recovery controls – so they can always recover from loss or attack, including:

Ransomware

Ransomware is a type of malware attack that penetrates systems and rapidly encrypts data. For businesses, ransomware can impact valuable consumer, operational, financial, and sensitive information, rendering it useless – severely disrupting (and potentially halting) business operations. And as ransomware threats, and the price tags associated with them surge, M365 backup provides a safety value to protect and rapidly (and fully) restore critical M365 data from attack.

Deletion

User error happens. Whether mistakenly removing a user, errantly altering a site or file, or deleting an important email – dedicated M365 backup goes beyond Microsoft retention limits. However, with native controls, once data is hard deleted from the production environment, it can no longer be recovered. With M365 backup and recovery solutions, businesses can always restore active or deleted Microsoft 365 data.

Internal Attack

Not all threats are external. While hackers and ransomware attempts skyrocket, internal threats and malicious users still loom large. It not properly protected, internal bad actors can intentionally delete, alter, or modify Microsoft 365 data. Dedicated Microsoft 365 backup solutions mitigate such internal threats by delivering pristine point-in-time backups of your data. This allows businesses to restore production data prior to any internal attack.

Outages or Errors

While Microsoft 365 services are highly availability, downtimes, outages or loss can still happen. Should Microsoft 365 experience downtime across any application, dedicated Microsoft 365 backup solutions provide a secondary copy to restore any impacted items. This ensure businesses always have a readily available copy of their data, that’s stored outside of production environments.

Extended retention policies

Whether meeting local, state, and federal regulations or internal company standards, admins must comply with pre-established SLAs. While Microsoft native controls offer replication capabilities, it is not purpose-built (or contractually obligated) to meet data recovery and retention SLAs. With Microsoft 365 backup and recovery solutions, you get comprehensive recovery options that extend beyond Microsoft 365 capabilities – enabling administrators to meet their stringent SLA requirements.

Robust recovery controls

With Microsoft 365 cloud backup, customers get protection that’s optimized for their needs.  Isolated, immutable copies ensure that critical data is always safe, and separate from production environments. This virtual air-gap ensures data is not subject to deletion and attack, and is available for recovery. Coupled with granular search, flexible point-in-time/out-of-place restore options, and advanced deduplication and compression, dedicated 365 backup solutions offer requisite tools for admins to rapidly recover with speed, precision, and less headaches.

Microsoft and Industry Experts Recommends Third-Party Microsoft 365 Backup

While Microsoft delivers robust hosting and security performance for reliable and constant access across email, files and communications, they recommend customer leverage third-party backup solutions for comprehensive protection of Microsoft 365 data. Data experts also emphasize the need for a proactive data protection strategy for SaaS applications – including Microsoft 365. From Gartner to Forrester, industry analysts cite the benefits of dedicated protection, identifying it as an imperative means to protect Microsoft 365 and SaaS application data in today’s rapidly evolving landscape.

Benefits of SaaS for Microsoft 365 backup solutions

The rapid adoption of M365 hinges on its robust capabilities and light-weight SaaS delivery model. The M365 cloud backup application is simple to deploy, has straightforward subscription pricing, and doesn’t require businesses to manage costly infrastructure. Commvault SaaS matches this usage and access model, enabling customers to manage their Microsoft 365 cloud backup with the simplicity of SaaS.

Unlike traditional Microsoft 365 backup solutions, Commvault SaaS-based Microsoft 365 backup means no more large, upfront capital expenditures. There is no hardware to license, install, upgrade, repair or maintain. Updates and maintenance are built-in, reducing the lift on IT to both deploy and administer the solution. There are also tangible benefits on storage, as there are no arrays to purchase or optimize. With Commvault SaaS M365 backup and recovery administrators enjoy zero ingress or egress fees – all built-into a straightforward per user subscription model. This level flexibility also removes the potential of under-utilization, as you only pay for what you need.

But SaaS doesn’t also mean sacrifice. Although the simple consumption model varies from that of installed software – you don’t have to compromise on security or protection. Commvault SaaS-based M365 cloud backup still offers the same level of enterprise-grade protection as traditional models, proven to keep data safe and sound, without the complexities.

What’s included in Commvault Backup for Microsoft 365?

Commvalt^® Backup for Microsoft 365 delivers award-winning data protection with the simplicity of SaaS. With coverage across Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, and more – Commvault provides comprehensive protection for your files, communications, and messages living in Microsoft 365. And because it’s SaaS, customers enjoy easy deployments, hassle-free maintenance, and zero hardware cost.