There is no denying that when it comes to productivity apps for your business, you can hardly look past Microsoft 365. While there are plenty of governance, collaboration and communication tools out there, there is safety in the Microsoft brand and it’s secure hosting. And the entire suite is accessible under one convenient pricing model.
When making major decisions about infrastructure and software, we can make assumptions based on industry standards, previous experiences, and let’s face it, brand. Most people do not think that backing up 365 is necessary. It’s a tried and tested platform with data retention and service level backup in-built.
And yet tech sites are awash with blog posts encouraging third party backup. Here’s why.
Microsoft has made it very clear exactly what you are covered for when it comes to data resilience. There’s no sneaky plot here. They take care of the infrastructure, but your data remains yours to protect. 365 provides data resiliency via failover data centres for incidents such as hardware failure, natural disasters, and human error. With storage replication and redundancy, most organizations feel they’ve covered every base for data recovery should anything disastrous happen.
It is worth having a look at the list of inclusions to be sure you know what is, and what isn’t included with your 365 backup.
A purpose built cloud backup for O365 with more than just daily backups, admin access and the ability to search data will give you peace of mind you won’t get with 365 default hosting. Customised support for backups for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Project Online, OneDrive for Business, Groups, Teams, Planner, and Public Folders is available.
For this post, we’ve made a list of some fail points in storage and backup you might not have thought of. Keep these in mind when considering cloud backup for O365.
Microsoft 365 offers secure cloud hosting with it’s licence. This is convenient for organizations who don’t require onsite or tailored hosting options. For those who require a more thoughtful choice of hosting, look for a backup solution that allows you to bring-your-own-storage (BYOS). You’ll maintain a hands-on approach to preserving data integrity and security over critical files.
You can also find hosting solutions that allow you to backup multiple times per day, instead of the 365 standard of once every 12 hours. When you think about how many emails and how much content your teams produce in any 6 hour period, it’s easy to see how twice per day just isn’t enough.
Native 365 hosting and storage will keep your data for anything from 92 days to one year. You may need to assess whether this is enough to meet your legal and compliance requirements. Additionally, you won’t have autonomous access to that backup. Choosing your solution means you can select a solution that provides access to an unlimited retention of data.
The Propelle solution to backup accommodates a range of hosting and backup locations which provide greater flexibility than the native 365 backup option. Azure (no, 365 does not currently host your data on Azure), Amazon S3, Dropbox, and any data destination accessible via FTP and SFTP can be supported. Our BYOS approach means whatever option you choose, it won’t interfere with achieving better-than-standard backup options. It will remove any doubt in times of crisis. You’ll be able to fish out whatever emails, contracts, or invoices you need to solve any issue at hand.
What if you misplace or delete an important email or document? If you manage to catch it before the Microsoft retention policy time frame is up, you have a chance of recovering it. This will take time, and you’ll need to ask Microsoft to assist – with no documented SLA for this service.
Time or object based restores with full-text search of backed up items are only possible with 3rd party software. Let’s say a departed staff member created an important policy document during their time with you. Unfortunately, it was accidentally deleted during or after their handover. With the right software, you can simply search on demand backups. Select the time frame you want to search within, or search for the document type or email you know exists in your backed up data.
What is granular restoration of data? Firstly, it means you can restore individual items without needing to restore bigger chunks of data and then hope that what you’re looking for is in there after you troll through it all.
It also gives you the ability to resolve conflicts by recovering specific versions of documents. Why is this significant? Native functionality will help you recover the latest version of a document on request, assuming it is within the restore time constraints. Specialised software allows you to recover ‘point-in-time’ versions of individual files. This is particularly helpful for compliance and auditing requirements, enabling you to meet legal obligations whenever they may pop up.
Propelle has the solutions and the expertise to help plug the gaps in your 365 data backup plan. We’re experienced in 365, and passionate about data integrity. We can work with you to find a solution to protecting your hard-gained resources.
It could be a question or something more. We are happy to discuss your needs whatever they may be.
