Top 5 Office 365 Online SaaS Backup Solutions

2021-22 DCIG Top 5 Office 365 Online SaaS Backup Solutions Report Now Available

By Jerome M. Wendt, president and lead analyst of storage analyst and consulting firm DCIG, LLC

DCIG announces the availability of the inaugural 2021-22 DCIG Top 5 Office 365 Online SaaS Backup Solutions report.

This report unveils the Top 5 SaaS backup solutions that organizations should consider for protecting their data stored in Office 365 online.

Microsoft Office 365 Online Usage Takes Off
Organizations may long remember 2020 as the year the Covid-19 pandemic dramatically changed the world forever as they knew it. Due to stay-at-home requirements everywhere, staff from more organizations worked remotely using online office productivity software to collaborate and communicate. This directly benefited Microsoft Office 365 Online.

During 2020 Microsoft Office 365 Online experienced a dramatic increase in usage.

Consider:
• Microsoft Office 365 is the cloud SaaS most used by enterprises
• Monthly active Office 365 users approached 230 million, a 15% Y/Y increase
• Teams had more than 115 million active users at the end of September 2020. This represented an increase of 40 million users (more than 50%) from March 2020 and an increase of 100 million from April 2019

Your Data, Your Responsibility
As organizations increase their usage of Office 365, they may overlook their need to backup data stored in it. Microsoft only takes responsibility for the hardware and software it uses to deliver and host Office 365 Online. It assumes limited or no responsibility for the data organizations host in it. Microsoft’s Services Agreement punctuates this point with its disclaimer: “Your content remains your content and you are responsible for it.”

Backing up data organizations keep in Office 365 remains their responsibility. To do so, many organizations will look to a cloud-based, SaaS backup solution to perform this task.

State of Office 365 Online SaaS Backup Solutions
Using Office 365 Online SaaS backup solutions hosted in the cloud makes sense for organizations. As their usage of Office 365 scales up or down, these backup solutions adjust in kind. Should organizations add more Office 365 users, they acquire more backup licenses. Should their number of users decrease, they may decrease their licenses as well.

Organizations will find the Office 365 Online SaaS backup solutions listed here offer a baseline set of features. They backup and recover the core Office 365 components organizations most often use, such as Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Teams, being a newer Office 365 offering, typically has more limited support. However, over 50% of solutions already offer some support for Microsoft Teams with more robust options to protect Teams rapidly emerging.

All evaluated solutions deliver the foundational features that organizations need to quickly begin protecting their Office 365 data.

Consider:

• Fast and Affordable
  Most Office 365 SaaS backup services start at about $4 per user per month with an annual contract. Once an organization subscribes and connects its Office 365 tenant to the SaaS backup solution, backups often start automatically. Most solutions, by default, schedule initial and recurring Office 365 backups without administrative intervention.
• No Installation, Setup, or Maintenance
  Providers host their Office 365 backup solution in either a general-purpose or purpose-built cloud. The solution providers then fix, patch, maintain, and update their software as part of their SaaS backup offering.
• Highly Available
  Each SaaS backup solution aligns with Office 365 in an important way: it gets hosted in a highly available cloud. The cloud which hosts it does vary. Some host their software in Microsoft Azure. Others use Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or a purpose-built cloud. Regardless of the solution, each one includes a service level agreement (SLA) of 99.5% or higher.
• Backup Storage and Storage Costs Included
  Many include cloud backup storage and its costs as part of the subscription price. This cost includes managing the placement of backup data in the cloud.
• Free Trial Periods
  Organizations may test a solution’s backup and recovery capabilities without paying an upfront fee. Many offer some type of trial for a limited time, usually 30 days. The trial may include access to all features for some users; access to some features for all users; or some combination thereof.

Office 365 Online SaaS Backup Solutions
In preparing this report, DCIG evaluated 15 SaaS backup solutions that protect Microsoft Office 365 Online:
• Acronis Cyber Protect
• Altaro Of ce 365 Backup
• AvePoint Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365
• Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup for Office 365
• Carbonite Backup for Microsoft 365 Business
• CloudAlly Microsoft 365 Backup
• Datto SaaS Protection
• Druva Insync
• HubStor Enterprise
• Keepit SaaS Backup
• Metallic Office 365 Backup
• Spanning Backup for Of ce 365
• Spin Technology SpinOne for Office ce 365
• StorageCraft Cloud Backup for Office 365
• Veritas Technologies SaaS Backup

The general categories under which the features evaluated for these solutions fell included:
• Anti-ransomware capabilities
• Backup capabilities
• Recovery and restore capabilities
• SaaS configuration, licensing, and pricing
• Support

Based on these criteria, DCIG awarded the following enterprise hybrid cloud SDS block storage solutions a Top 5 ranking (in alphabetical order):
• Metallic Office 365 Backup
• Spanning Backup for Office 365
• Spin Technology SpinOne for Office 365
• StorageCraft Cloud Backup for Office 365
• Veritas Technologies SaaS Backup

Complete report (need to register)