Dialog slashes licensing costs and supports business continuity with Metallic™ Office 365 Backup

Challenge

  • Difficulty meeting data retention and management requirements for Office 365
  • Desire to introduce a cloud backup solution to support business continuity strategy and reduce costs

Solution

  • Deployed Metallic™ Office 365 Backup to protect the entire Microsoft Office 365 environment, including Exchange, SharePoint Online, Teams and OneDrive, across the Dialog Group of Companies

Result

  • A $20,000 reduction in annual licensing cost with a fixed cost per user model
  • Avoided upfront costs by $50,000 by adopting a SaaS-based Metallic Office 365 Backup
  • Leverage dedicated backup instead of building its own infrastructure
  • Deployed Metallic Office 365 Backup within hours of signing up
  • 95% less time to manage backups for Office 365 environment
  • Freed up staff to focus on expanding the business rather than maintaining backups
  • Maintain greater business continuity and meet SLA compliance

Pull Metrics

  • A $20,000 reduction in annual licensing cost
  • $50,000 saving in upfront costs
  • 95% less administrative time

“With the combination of the reputation for Commvault in this space and competitive pricing offered by Metallic, it was a straightforward decision to make.”

– Bob Tisdall, Director, Dialog Information Technology

“Compared to other vendors like Altaro, Metallic Office 365 Backup gave us a very rapid solution. We could trial immediately and had the first backup running within hours of signing up.”

– Robert Passlow, Infrastructure Team Lead, Dialog Information
Technology

“We reviewed the other offerings and they required us to have an existing Infrastructure as a Service. But with Metallic Office 365 Backup, there was no infrastructure or hardware expenses and that saved us an initial investment of US $50,000.”

– Robert Passlow, Infrastructure Team Lead, Dialog Information
Technology

About Dialog

Dialog is Australia’s leading privately owned information technology services organisation, specializing in services ranging from strategic consulting to application development and long-term operational support. Established in 1979, Dialog now operates six group companies and employs more than 1,200 consultants nationwide to help customers maximize their investment on technology.

Since the company moved to the cloud and adopted Microsoft Teams, Dialog saw the need to deploy a Data Protection as a Service solution to simplify backups for its Office 365 environment across the group companies.

“We wanted a secure managed backup solution that we could effectively purchase, insert the key, and turn it on,” said Robert Passlow, IT Infrastructure Team Lead at Dialog. “Metallic Office 365 Backup & Recovery enabled us to achieve this simplicity.”

The Challenge

Before Metallic, Dialog was using the built-in tools within Office 365 to back up mailbox data. With up to 14% year-on-year business growth and 1,200 mailboxes, it became increasingly challenging for Dialog to organize and maintain those datasets intact.

“If someone left the company, data in that mailbox would be deleted 60 days after we removed the license. The only way we could archive the data is sending that mailbox to a free mailbox within Office 365 that never gets deleted by Microsoft,” said Passlow.

As a quality assured company, Dialog is required to maintain cloud backups and disaster recovery copies as per the SAGE methodology. To support its vision, Dialog needed a reliable cloud-based backup solution that could support its business continuity strategy and data retention requirements without introducing complexity to its IT infrastructure or increasing operational costs.

“We were already a substantial Office 365 user and all our documentation is on the cloud,” said Bob Tisdall, Director of Dialog. “With the combination of the reputation for Commvault in this space and competitive pricing offered by Metallic, it was a reasonably straightforward decision to make.”

The Solution

When Dialog adopted Microsoft Teams to support remote work and collaboration, it cemented the need for a dedicated third-party solution to manage not only mailboxes, but also their critical productivity data. The company evaluated various options for Data Protection as a Service before deciding Metallic Office 365 Backup was the right fit.

“Compared to other vendors like Altaro, Metallic™ Office 365 Backup gave us a very rapid solution. We could trial immediately and had the first backup running within hours of signing up,” said Passlow.“The transition to Metallic™ Office 365 Backup was easy and effective—from initial contact to procurement, implementation and onboarding. The support team was also responsive to address our requests.”

Dialog can automate their data backups and store them within Metallic, rather than manually managing it within the Office 365 production environment. Passlow was also impressed with the ability to backup and in-place restore Microsoft Teams conversations, files, and more. “We can simply go straight to the Metallic console and select the Microsoft Teams conversations we want to restore,” said Robert. “It’s so simple and easy to deploy.”

The Results

Using a SaaS-based Metallic solution enabled Dialog to easily expand the solution to all the group companies without upfront costs. “We reviewed the other offerings and they required us to have an existing Infrastructure as a Service. But with Metallic Office 365 Backup, there was no infrastructure or hardware expenses and that saved us an initial investment of US$50,000,” said Passlow.

Unlike some other products with a subscription based on volume, Metallic Office 365 Backup uses a transparent and fixed per user cost model. With unlimited Azure storage and unlimited retention included, Metallic provides Dialog with better peace of mind by eliminating the potential of cost creep.

“What we struggle is the unknown variable of users patterns,” said Passlow. “With Metallic Office 365 Backup, we know exactly how many licenses we have to purchase and saved us A$20,000 in annual licensing costs.”

The transition to Metallic Office 365 Backup also allowed Dialog to easily manage its cloud backups via a single pane of glass for comprehensive coverage of its group companies and nationwide consultants. This has reduced time to manage Office 365 backups by 95%.

“The manageability and performance of Metallic Office 365 Backup made it a scalable and easy to use solution. We can focus on making money, rather than things that cost us money,” added Tisdall. The company can also bring forward its plan to adopt OneDrive as its key collaboration tool and support a remote workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic.