The big Office 365 misconception

Protecting on-premises data is a no-brainer, but many organizations overlook protecting cloud data because they believe this is covered as part of their cloud service. The misunderstanding falls between Microsoft’s perceived responsibility and the user’s actual responsibility for the protection and long-term retention of their Office 365 data. The backup and recoverability that Microsoft provides and what users assume they are getting are often different.

Microsoft Office 365 offers geo-redundancy, which is often mistaken for backup. Backup takes place when a historical copy of data is made and then stored in another location. However, it is even more important that you have direct access to and control over that backup. So, if data is lost, accidentally deleted or maliciously attacked, for example — you can quickly recover. Geo redundancy, on the other hand, protects against site or hardware failure, so if there is an infrastructure crash or outage, your users will remain productive and often oblivious to these underlying issues. Microsoft provides powerful services within Office 365 – but a comprehensive backup of your Office 365 data is not one of them. Even though Microsoft hosts the infrastructure, this doesn’t replace your responsibility of maintaining a backup of your business-critical Office 365 data.

“With Office 365, it’s your data, you own it, you control it.” – The Office 365 Trust Center

6 reasons why backing up Office 365 is critical

Veeam® Backup for Microsoft Office 365 eliminates the risk of losing access and control over your Office 365 data including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams – so that your data is always protected and accessible.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 gives you the power to securely backup Office 365 and:

• Protect your Office 365 data from accidental deletion, security threats, and retention policy gaps
• Quickly restore individual Office 365 email, files, and sites with industry-leading recovery flexibility
• Meet legal and compliance requirements with efficient eDiscovery of Office 365 items

Backup Office 365 SharePoint, email and files to any location

• Retrieve Office 365 Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Teams data from a cloud-based instance of Office 365 and uniquely backup the data as often as every five minutes in Microsoft’s native format — an archive database based on Extensible Storage Engine (ESE), also known as the Jet Blue database
• Backup Exchange and SharePoint on-premises reducing the impact to your datacenter and allowing YOU to set the frequency and timing of your backups
• Store backups in the location of your choice — on-premises, in a hyperscale public cloud (i.e., Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services) or with a local service provider
• Protect data posted and shared with Microsoft Teams chats, files, and sites, as Teams data is journaled into Exchange Online and SharePoint Online

Restore Office 365 with industry-leading recovery flexibility

Granularly restore Office 365 mailboxes and emails, SharePoint sites, documents, libraries, and lists, as well as OneDrive for Business accounts, files, and folders, in a few simple clicks. Built-in Veeam Explorers™ for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business enable:

• Quick search and granular recovery of individual objects — including Microsoft Teams data — residing in a protected copy of your Office 365 backup
• Direct restore of Office 365 items through 25 different ways to restore from Office 365 Backups, giving you ultimate restore flexibility

Unified on-premises and Office 365

Ensuring control of Office 365 email and SharePoint data requires a solution that can cover both Office 365 and any on-premises Exchange and SharePoint instances that you may have. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 allows you to:

• Protect hybrid email and SharePoint deployments
• Migrate mailbox data between on-premises Exchange and Office 365
• Perform backups of unique and localized versions of Office 365, including support for Office 365 U.S. Government (DoD and non-DoD)

Meet Office 365 security and compliance requirements

Security and compliance concerns are big drivers for the need to backup Office 365 email and other Office 365 data. With an Office 365 backup, you can:

• Store data based on long-term retention policies for regulatory or compliance needs
• Ensure you recover exactly what you need — no more, no less — with granular advanced search and find functionality