Microsoft 365 has become the center of daily operations for many organizations. Email lives in Exchange Online. Employees store documents in OneDrive. Departments collaborate through SharePoint and Teams.
Because all of that information is stored in Microsoft's cloud, it is easy to assume Microsoft is also maintaining the kind of independent backup many organizations expect.
Those are two different things.
Microsoft provides an extremely resilient cloud platform with native retention, recycle-bin and recovery capabilities. Those tools are valuable. But service availability and native retention are not the same thing as maintaining an independent backup and recovery strategy.
Data Can Disappear for More Than One Reason
Most data loss is not caused by a failed Microsoft data center.
More common situations include:
- an employee deleting a folder
- a mailbox being removed
- SharePoint content being deleted
- a departing employee intentionally removing information
- account compromise
- ransomware affecting synchronized content
- discovering months later that something important disappeared
That last scenario is especially important.
The question is often not simply, “When was this deleted?” It is: “When did anyone realize it was missing?”
Retention gives an organization a longer window to answer that question.
Independent Recovery Creates Another Option
Mayer Networks provides Microsoft 365 Backup as part of the broader Microsoft 365 environment we manage for clients.
Supported Microsoft 365 information can be copied into an independent backup platform so recovery does not depend exclusively on what remains inside the production Microsoft 365 tenant.
That gives us another recovery path when supported email, OneDrive or SharePoint information needs to be restored.
Backup Software Is Only Part of the Service
Buying a backup product is easy.
Someone still needs to:
- configure protection
- monitor it
- investigate failures
- manage retention
- respond when someone needs data restored
That operational responsibility is an important part of the Mayer Networks approach.
Microsoft provides the productivity platform. Mayer Networks helps administer, secure, support and protect the environment around it.