Marcus Richards
How valuable is your company’s data to you as an IT administrator? No doubt, protecting your business-critical data is one of your top priorities whether your data is stored on-premises or in the cloud.
Microsoft’s Office 365 Software-as-a-Service environment is one of the top SaaS environments that many are choosing to migrate critical data to the public cloud. If you are in the process of migrating your data to Office 365 or are contemplating the migration of data to the Office 365 SaaS environment, you must think about protecting your data.
There are many Office 365 backup tools available for businesses to choose from. However, what is the best data backup service for Office 365? Let’s take a look at why backing up the Office 365 SaaS environment is crucial and which product you should use to back up your data.
Why organizations need SaaS backup service for Office 365
You would never put a new on-premises virtual environment or hardware storage appliance in place and assume there is no need to protect your data. You expect to have not only hardware failures but also data loss at some point due to end-user mistakes including accidental or intentional data deletion. What about security-related events and data loss as a result of malware, including ransomware?
You hope to never experience any of the above-mentioned data loss scenarios, but you expect they will happen at some point. No matter how resilient or impressive the uptime ratings of a particular environment, including public cloud providers, data loss can and will happen.
At the end of the day, cloud providers are not responsible for your data. You are responsible for your data and this includes protecting it appropriately. Office 365 is no exception to this rule. You must protect your environment from any number of scenarios where data can be lost.
How to choose the best backup service
What criteria do you need to take into account when it comes to choosing a SaaS backup solution? There are many aspects to think about when choosing the best backup service for Office 365. What features and functionality should be important to you when choosing a backup service for Office 365?
There is a core set of features and functionality you should look for when deciding upon a backup solution for your SaaS environment like Office 365. These include the following:
- The solution should backup the services you use/plan on using
- Data should be stored outside of the Office 365 environment
- It needs to include the ability to store multiple restore points (configurable)
- Version control
- Deletion control
- Retention control
- Visibility to protected/unprotected data
- Backup security including encryption of your backup data
These core set of functionality and features are the minimum requirements you should look for when considering backup solutions for your Office 365 environment. Let’s take a look at three Office 365 backup solutions and see how they compare when protecting your data in Office 365. Which offers the best value for your business?
Backupify Office 365 Backup
Backupify is a well-known Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) backup solution that offers solutions to backup both G Suite and Office 365. It contains great features for protecting your Office 365 environment. Backupify provides protection for Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Calendar, and Contacts. Backupify allows storing your Office 365 backups outside the Office 365 environment in their own private cloud storage especially during complex tasks such as to migrate data from file server to sharepoint online or file share to sharepoint migration etc.
Backupify Office 365 backup and recovery
Pros:
- Automatic backups
- Provides backups of the major Office 365 services
- Intuitive interface
- Granular restores
- Unlimited retention
- Data stored outside of the Office 365 environment
Cons:
- Dated interface
- Price is not readily accessible on the Backupify site
- Other than security details, there are no other details regarding the private cloud storage used for Backupify backups (availability, architecture, etc)
Spinbackup Office 365 Backup
Spinbackup is an Office 365 backup solution that provides many great features to protect your business-critical data in Office 365. Spinbackup provides protection for Exchange Online, OneDrive, Calendar, and People backup.
Spinbackup provides a tremendous amount of backup for Office 365 options including the choice to use storage in AWS S3, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure. Spinbackup’s Office 365 solution borrows heavily from the great features provided in their Google G Suite backup solution.
The roadmap for Spinbackup’s features for Office 365 looks to achieve feature parity with their G Suite solution, including cybersecurity features – Spinbackup.com.
Spinbackup Office 365 backup and recovery
Pros:
- Best options among its competitors for storing your backup data
- Modern intuitive interface
- Automatic backups
- Reasonably priced at $3 user/mo
- Version and deletion control
- Strong roadmap of features coming
Cons:
- Cybersecurity features have not yet been implemented
- No backups for SharePoint Online
Spanning Office 365 Backup
Spanning is a cloud-to-cloud backup solution for Office 365 that provides easy backup and restore functionality to Office 365 environments. Spanning protects Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Calendar. Spanning backups for Office 365 are stored inside AWS cloud infrastructure so backups of Office 365 are stored outside Office 365.
Spanning Office 365 backup and recovery
Pros
- Automated backups
- Granular restores
- User Activity reports
- Stored in AWS cloud storage
- Intuitive interface
Cons
- No backups of Contacts
- Legacy interface which is a bit cumbersome
- No configurable retention settings?
Backupify vs Spinbackup – Which One to Choose?
When deciding who should be chosen to protect your Office 365 data, it comes down to Backupify vs Spinbackup.
Spinbackup has the superior interface working with the backups/restores, more configurable options, as well as the ability to choose your storage location between the three major public cloud providers. This certainly provides you with better options for storing your backup data than Backupify.
With the soon to come cybersecurity features coming to Spinbackup for Office 365 as contained in their G Suite solution, the roadmap for Spinbackup for Office 365 looks strong. Due to the up and coming features, multiple storage locations, more modern interface, and competitive price, Spinbackup edges out Backupify as the winner.
