Let’s face it the “Cloud” is an important part of IT these days. It allows organizations to quickly deploy technology that most would not have dreamed of twenty years ago. One of the biggest cloud success stories is Office 365. Nevertheless with this power comes responsibility on the customer side. It comes in the form of you (or your IT folks) backing up tenant data in Office 365. Here is language straight from Microsoft’s service agreement:
“We strive to keep the Services up and running; however, all online services suffer occasional disruptions and outages, and Microsoft is not liable for any disruption or loss you may suffer as a result. In the event of an outage, you may not be able to retrieve Your Content or Data that you’ve stored. We recommend that you regularly backup Your Content and Data that you store on the Services or store using Third-Party Apps and Services.”*
So remember to use third party tools to backup your data. In the case of Office 365 you want a tool that takes backups of OneDrive (files), Sharepoint (files and metadata), email, calendars, tasks and contacts. There are tools that can do this locally or to another data center in the Cloud. Either way make sure that you have something that allows you to retain your critical information well beyond Microsoft timelines. Any backup system is ultimately controlled by humans…always the weakest link.
