What’s the best backup strategy for Office 365 users?
Yes, you have moved to the cloud. But you may not want to rely totally on Microsoft’s backup strategy.
Many businesses today do not maintain a physical mail and document server. The upfront investment and added expense of a server room or colocation costs have prompted the move to using Office 365 for email and document storage and sharing.
Data Recovery Timeframe
Even though the cost for mail, Office, and document storage is less expensive when purchased as a service, the retention and availability of your data still needs to be taken into consideration. Office 365 promises to have an uptime and availability of >99%, but if someone overwrites a file or deletes it, is it recoverable? Office 365 does have recovery options, but it can take up to 3 days in some situations for documents to be available again.
Just like if your business had its own email and document servers, it’s imperative that a backup and recovery plan be in place that doesn’t rely on your production servers (and hopefully that backup is offsite and secure).
Backup Options
There are a handful of companies that offer backup for Office 365, including email and documents. Because they are only focused on the backup and availability of that data for restores, their time to restore your data for any reason will be much faster than relying on Microsoft. Not to mention, because it is a different system, your backups will be available even if Office 365 has an outage.
Each company has different pros and cons and the one you choose will depend on your budget and meeting your business needs. Most meet the federal data requirements, including HIPAA. Some companies with cloud-to-cloud backup for Office 365: Datto, veeam, Skykick, and Spanning.
DWD’s network engineers can help you determine the best backup approach for your business. Contact us to discuss your options.