Microsoft have recently announced their Microsoft 365 Backup and Archive solutions, expected to be entering preview in Q4 this year.
Microsoft introducing a backup solution to the Microsoft 365 platform is an interesting development. We’ve recommended backing up Microsoft 365 data for a long time, but it’s not always been clear where Microsoft stand on it, in their announcements and demo Microsoft use client-side ransomware attacks as a use case. In addition to that we believe that it’s good to be covered for less malicious scenarios as well, for example accidental file deletions, which can go unnoticed for long enough that they’ve passed out of configured retention periods.
So, what if you’re already using a 3rd party Microsoft 365 backup? Will they be rendered obsolete? Probably not, Microsoft also announced these services would be coming with new API’s as well as new partnerships with leading backup vendors, including one of our favourites, Veeam. These API’s should allow partners to further enrich their products and we think it’s likely that 3rd party vendors will still offer some extra features such as a greater variety of options on were you store your backups, how they are restored and where they are restored to. For some organisations, these options will be very important. However, for organisations not currently backing up their data and looking for a simple solution all in one platform, inside their existing security boundary, this is an exciting proposition.
For archiving we’ve had that capability for Exchange mailboxes for a long time, Microsoft 365 Archive though brings archiving to SharePoint data. This is particularly exciting if you’re exceeding your included storage limit. If you’ve got data that needs to be kept but is seldom accessed, then whole sites can be set to archive after a set period of inactivity. Owners will be given an opportunity to keep the site active but otherwise it will be moved to a cool storage tier, at a lower cost than buying additional SharePoint storage. What’s also great about this is that your admin-level search, e-Discovery, access policy, DLP, retention policy, and metadata functionality will still work with the archived sites.
We are certainly looking forward to working with these products and will be keeping an eye out for further information, including pricing. In the meantime, if this has got you thinking you need to review whether your Microsoft 365 data is as protected as it should be, we’ve got a number of options for backing up your data available today.
About the author
Rob Phillips, Solutions Architect at Koris365
A Microsoft 365 specialist with over 15 years’ experience designing and implementing Microsoft solutions. Rob has experience working with organisations across varied sectors and sizes and is passionate about maximising return on investment of Microsoft 365 licensing, ensuring a secure tenancy and implementing Microsoft modern workplace solutions.