One could say that data is the most important resource for the majority of organizations. The importance of data becomes even more prevalent when it comes to working with various cloud services – with Microsoft 365 being one of the biggest players on this market.
Microsoft 365 offers a stunning number of services, including file sharing, video conferences, mailboxes, etc. That being said, this list does not include any sort of comprehensive enterprise data backup system, which is a surprise for a lot of users.
There are many backup and recovery-related challenges that Microsoft 365 cannot help companies with, since it does not provide a dedicated backup solution. Some of the biggest challenges on this list are:
- Security threats;
- Compliance threats;
- Data deletion by accident;
- Retention policies, and so on
There’s a surprising number of companies that form their data protection strategies with Microsoft 365 backup and recovery services as their basis. The main problem in this situation lies in the misunderstanding of Microsoft’s responsibilities as a service provider in general.
The main goal and responsibility of Microsoft as a service provider is the cloud’s uptime and availability. Both of those are held to high standards by Microsoft themselves. The client’s data is stored inside of several geographically separated data centers, offering high availability even in the most disastrous cases (man-made or natural).
At the same time, Microsoft also takes the role of a data processor when it comes to your information as a client. This means that all of the responsibilities of a data processor are now on their shoulders, including industry compliance, regulatory controls, data privacy matters, etc. It is worth mentioning that the only scope of responsibility that Microsoft has, in this case, is physical – logical security, various controls for both administrators and regular users, app-level security, and such.
Additionally, it’s also fair to mention that Microsoft 365 offers basic data replication capabilities, at most. Some of those options are geo-redundancy, Recycle Bin, and so on. It’s possible to make do with only these options, but small companies are the only ones that can work with this kind of setup in the first place.
This is pretty much the extent of M365’s responsibilities – meaning that it’s up to the client themselves to set up their own tools for data retention, backup, data security, risk mitigation, etc.
Speaking of backup solutions, the market is overflowing with various platforms and systems that offer many different features. Choosing the correct option for your specific use case is not that easy sometimes – that’s why below you’ll find a number of features that any backup and recovery solution for the enterprise should have:
- Backup integration with M365. It’s extremely useful for your backup solution to have integration capabilities with different IT environments within your organization – including Microsoft 365.
- Scalability. Meeting the demands of both the business and the market is as important as it gets since a lot of companies grow on a regular basis – this is why scalability is as important as it is right now.
- Flexibility. Scalability is not the only thing that is important in this context – being flexible and having the ability to work with multiple different cloud service providers is also a high point in any backup solution’s feature list.
- Security. Ransomware, malware, data misuse – these are just some of the potential problems that almost any company is facing at some point in their life. Having a dedicated backup solution with protection from these kinds of troubles makes the company’s life that much easier.
- Extra features. Some specific features are more useful than others, including granular recovery capability, incremental/differential backup, retention based on policies, automation capabilities, and more.
As it stands, there are many different backup and recovery solutions on the market that can work with most of the Microsoft 365-related needs. Some of these solutions are Acronis, Commvault, Rubrik, Veeam, Dell EMC, Druva, Bacula Enterprise, and so on.
It should be no surprise to anyone that most of the solutions offer an extremely wide variety of features – all of the recommended ones, and even more than that. We’ll be using Bacula Enterprise as an example of how many features can one solution offer to a company.
Bacula Enterprise offers an extremely wide variety of features for many M365-related services, ranging from Calendars and Contacts to SharePoint Online, OneDrive, OneNote, and so on. Some of the more important features of Bacula Enterprise are presented below:
- Incremental, Differential, and Full backup types.
- Extreme scalability, from small companies to massive enterprises.
- Deduplication capabilities.
- Granular file restoration.
- Ransomware protection.
- Compatibility with a lot of containers and Hypervisor types, etc.
Conclusion
Having a dedicated backup solution is a must for all of the companies that are concerned about their data being stolen or corrupted beyond repair by complete accident, or via someone’s malicious intent. The market for backup solutions is wide and varied, it should be possible to find the one solution that fits your specific company the most.