Office 365 sounds like a godsend when it comes to data protection. The data is in the cloud — what could go wrong? A lot.
With Office 365, there is often only one core copy of the data in the cloud – just one tier of storage with no easily accessible additional backup. Much can happen to that one data set. Users could accidently delete information they or others need, and hackers could erase or corrupt larger amounts of data.
Meanwhile, when employees leave, they often delete their data – but that data is not necessarily theirs – it belongs to the organization and should be retained. There are two more reasons to backup SaaS data, a report “Back Up Your SaaS Data — Because Most SaaS Providers Don’t” from Forrester Research asserts:
Without backup, there is no recourse when these ills occur:
Prolonged outages. An unexpected and prolonged outage at your SaaS provider can be the remote incident that cripples your business. Unless you have a plan for how to handle such circumstances, it is highly unlikely that you will have access to your data.
Insurance brokerage firms in the UK using services from SSP Worldwide were rendered helpless when SSP faced a three-weeklong outage.7 Brokers could not issue new policies, look up the expiration dates of existing policies, or communicate with their clients. SSP Worldwide couldn’t recover some clients’ data from backup instances — and to brokers’ utter dismay, SSP Worldwide assumed no responsibility for losses they suffered due to the outage.
Data retention policy for audit or compliance purpose. While your organization’s policy or regulatory compliance mandates require you to retain data for few months or years, your SaaS providers won’t preserve data for that long.
Organizations must have a plan, and a solution to protect their SaaS, including Office 365, data. “Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a popular element of a sound technology strategy. While almost all SaaS vendors explicitly state that protecting data is the customer’s responsibility, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders usually send critical data to those providers without any plan for ensuring data resiliency. Back up SaaS data or risk losing customers, partners, and employees,” the Forrester report says.
More telling, SaaS providers do not even know if you have lost data. And even if the provider can get your data back, the process is expensive and can take weeks.
Kaseya has an Answer – Let VSA do the Heavy Lifting
This is precisely why Kaseya has partnered with Spanning Cloud Apps to offer an enterprise-class Office 365 backup solution aimed at MSPs and SMBs that integrates with the Kaseya VSA RMM. Kaseya Office 365 Backup will be available in the second half of 2018 and will be part of the Kaseya IT Complete platform.
With Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella suggesting that the company could grow more from its Office 365 line of cloud productivity apps than anything in the company’s 43-year history, it is clear that Office 365 is now hitting its stride. In its first fiscal quarter of 2018, Microsoft saw commercial revenue from Office 365 grow 42 percent with its commercial subscriber base swelling to 120 million users. As Office 365 continues to become a ubiquitous IT asset for businesses of all sizes, the need for reliable data protection has come to a head. Powered by Spanning’s backup and recovery technologies for SaaS applications, Kaseya Office 365 Backup will help MSPs seamlessly back up and recover the most critical business data for both their own businesses and those of their customers.
“Office 365 is quickly becoming the application that companies rely on to operate their business. As such, MSPs need to take a proactive stance to protect and back up one of their most vital IT assets,” said Frank Tisellano Jr., vice president product management and design, Kaseya. “Having an air-tight backup strategy for a business critical application like Office 365 is imperative for businesses, which is why we’ve partnered with Spanning – the clear market leader in Office 365 backup – to develop Kaseya Office 365 Backup.”
As SMBs have migrated from on-premises Microsoft Exchange servers to Office 365, MSPs are rapidly adapting their service offerings. Today, 87 percent of Kaseya MSP customers provide Office 365 services representing over 9 million deployed seats. Recent Kaseya research also found that 49 recent of MSPs have expanded their Office 365 service offering to include backup. With the need for full-service Office 365 support and backup reaching a critical maximum for MSPs, Kaseya and Spanning have come together to develop the new Kaseya Office 365 Backup solution.
“Spanning Backup for Office 365 is a highly scalable cloud backup service that supports a wide range of companies, from those with only a few employees to organizations with tens of thousands. Not only is our technology easy-to-use, but it delivers the scale and enterprise-grade reliability that customers demand and that the MSP market has been clamoring for. Together with Kaseya’s market leading position, we are well poised to fill a long standing need to help MSPs deliver a mission critical service that will also help them to grow their businesses,” said Mat Hamlin, vice president of products, Spanning.
Spanning is a Gold Sponsor of Kaseya Connect 2018, and will exhibit and present during the conference. Additional details about Kaseya Office 365 Backup will be revealed to customers during the annual user conference taking place in Las Vegas, May 8-10 at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. For more information and to register for Kaseya Connect 2018, visit https://kaseyaconnect.com.
