Veeam boosts its backup solution for Microsoft 365

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Published in its 6th version, the Veeam backup for Microsoft 365 offer is enriched with additional features. A self-service portal for recovery, multi-factor authentication and archiving are on the menu.

To support the growing adoption of Office 365, Veeam has been offering a data protection service (Backup for Microsoft 365) for the online office suite since 2016, since Microsoft still does not offer this function as standard. In the event of a major failure in MS data centers, service can be restored, but not user data. The Backup for Microsoft 365 offer is enjoying some success, as Stéphane Berthaud, Technical Director at Veeam France, points out: “This solution has experienced the strongest growth in recent years, more than 70% in 2021 and we are now protecting 8 .5 million unique users”. Regularly, Veeam develops its product and has just presented the 6^th iteration.

“The most visible development is the provision of a self-service catering portal for the end user”, emphasizes the manager. He adds, “Usually for restoration, you have to go through the IT teams, it takes time and some tasks can be automated”. Concretely, on the portal, the user or a group with the rights can choose to find all their data (email, files and documents) which are attached to their account (Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams). Veeam has also added an additional security option with multi-factor authentication for data restoration.

Backup copies in AWS Glacier and Azure Archive

Other function introduced in this 6^th version, “the ability to use storage classes for long-term data retention on AWS and Azure,” says Stéphane Berthaud. He finds that “the volume of data generated by Office 365 users is growing rapidly and businesses need to rely on low-cost object storage.” Veeam therefore provides the ability to add archive copies to AWS S3 Glacier, Glacier Deep Archive, and Azure Archive. “In terms of cost, the Glacier offer is 20 times cheaper than S3,” slips the manager.

Among other developments, Backup for Microsoft 365 is equipped with an auto-udpate mechanism, “this means that updates are carried out in the background and without the need to interrupt the service”, specifies Stéphane Berthaud. It also highlights the Community edition of the offer which protects 10 users or teams for free by granting 1 TB of backup. Note that Veeams is not the only one to offer a back-up solution for Microsoft 365, Atempo, Hycu or even Veritas also offer backup services for the office suite.