What is most valuable?
It's a simple solution to use. It's simple to configure everything that you need — configure your backups. It gives you an option to backup to the cloud or backup to on-premise, or to backup to cloud storage.
For example, if a customer is running on Azure NetApp files or on something cloud-based that they want to back up, they have the option of bringing their own licensing and cloud controls and NetApp will give them the storage to back up for as long as they want.
When deleting backups, the controls are very intuitive so not just anyone can delete the backups, only the administrator is able to do that.
Backing up and restoring is simple. It's easy. It's one click of a button. It's quite good, I like it.
What needs improvement?
There are still a few things on SharePoint that they need to correct in terms of how they backup and restore. That's something that we had a challenge with; however, I know that they've been correcting these problems, which is good. The SharePoint Backup is one of the things that they need to look at.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We had an issue with SharePoint Defender earlier. We had a few bug issues in terms of restoring, but that has been fixed. Apart from that, we've had no issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
They've always been supportive of everything that we've contacted them with. They have a lot of knowledge-based articles on their support center on particular issues that help us with challenges and misfits, especially with permissions. They'll come to you, create your organization, which has to have permission to have a global view of the Office 365 environment, to be able to take backups. They're extremely supportive, and they have a knowledge base that really helps other partners to install Office 365 effectively.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very simple. All you need to do is log in and create your login credentials on Office 365 Backup. It's already intuitively connected to Office 365, so all you need to do is put in the licensing and start configuring. It's very simple. It's already set up. You don't have to do much.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is more or less the same as what we'd get from Veeam on Office 365, so it's fine.
What other advice do I have?
The new name is SaaS Backup for Office 365.
I would recommend it because it makes it simple to manage backups from Office 365. It's really simple to use, very simple to scale, very simple to remove a license on a user who's no longer there and reuse that license.
You're able to keep the backups of users who have left the organization. You're able to keep all that backup swab just in case you need it for either compliance issues or if they return to the organization. You're able to restore all their emails and objects easily.
Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.
The one thing that I'd want to see is integration into SnapCenter, which is NetApp's single pane of glass' for their backups. Not just for on-premise, but for the cloud as well, because there are CBL and Azure NetApp Files on Azure. If that integration could work, that would be good. I think that would be beneficial to the customer — as such, it works very well. If there were a litigation search function that could search through the organization to look for a specific email in case there's a litigation hold, that would be good.
Also, a function to restore to an on-premise exchange would definitely be helpful for customers who are running a hybrid exchange implementation. It's there, but you have to restore and run on the exchange, and then move the data back to on-premise. If we could have a function, or a tool, which we can take that backup from wherever it is, and just restore it to exchange, that would be perfect as well.
