ESTEREL, QUE. – According to many market share reports, Office 365 from Microsoft Corp. is the most widely used cloud app among the business community.
But what many of these users don’t know is that the data created by Word, Excel, PowerPoint and others in Office 365 is not backed up.
David Latulippe, the co-founder and vice president of Quebec-based IT Cloud Solutions told EChannelNews, the vast majority of these users believe their data is backed up in the cloud.
“Unfortunately, the IT companies or their channel partners as well as customers think and even talk about when data is in Office 365, OneDrive and Exchange you do not need a backup because it’s the cloud,” Latulippe said.
Latulippe believes a myth has been created around Office 365 – not by Microsoft – but by users who wish to move to the cloud. “Even in 2018, they think Office 365 with mail boxes and Exchange is in the cloud and the data centre will protected it. But they don’t think about if a failure happens tomorrow on the servers.”
He added that the myth has gone unchecked because people believe the cloud automatically provides backup. The cloud was not built to provide backup services and accessibility. It was built for access anywhere in the world.
But Latulippe, who has built IT Cloud into one of only six authorized Microsoft Cloud Service Providers (CSP) in Canada, says you always have to have a backup because there is only 30 days retention on delete files in Office 365.
ITCloud has developed an agentless backup for Office 365 that not only protects the data but also can encrypt it through a web-based interface. With this solution, users can recover a file, a folder, or an entire backup in its original format. This solution is from StorageCraft and provides protection for Exchange, Calendars and contacts, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint.
In an on-premise environment, the Exchange server would have at least two-months retention protection. The cloud currently does not offer that. “With the run up to the cloud, customers will throw away the server and forget to apply a backup strategy,” he added.
From a channel perspective, Latulippe said partners need to upsell around Office 365 licenses and not just settle with making margin on the license only. “You have to wrap services around it for new recurring revenue streams. But more importantly, MSPs can give customers a complete piece of mind with their data and position themselves as a real backup expert.”
