Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 released, adds self-service restore

Veeam users can now safely recover their own lost data with the latest version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365. The self-service recovery option is among many new features in Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6, released on Wednesday.

The v6 release also enables tiering to lower cost cold cloud storage and archiving services from AWS and Microsoft. Veeam has also added the ability to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) when restoring backups. Additionally, Veeam exposed the software’s APIs, aimed at making the offering more scalable and enabling integration with partner platforms.

Since launching the SaaS backup offering more than five years ago, it has become one of the company’s fastest growing solutions. The company saw 73% year-over-year subscription growth in 2021, Veeam CTO Danny Allan told Channel Futures. Including seats managed by cloud service providers Veeam (VCSP), it now protects more than 10 million Microsoft 365 user accounts, Allan said.

“We’ve had tremendous growth and we’re just getting started,” Allan said.

Microsoft 365

Despite having more than 10 million users, this is a tiny percentage of the 300 million M365 licenses reported by Microsoft, he added. Noting Microsoft’s projections that this figure will reach 500 million by 2025, Allan said this is an “entirely new opportunity”.

Additionally, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is now often the first product purchased by customers, according to Allan.

“It becomes the entry point into their organization,” he said. This is often the case for Island Internet SolutionsVCSP partner.

Many of Iland’s new backup customers are looking to fill an Office 365 protection gap.

Dante Orsini d’Iland

“It certainly leads to an opportunity to land and expand,” Iland Senior Vice President Dante Orsini said. “But once people get their hands on it, and they see how simple and elegant it is, and how well it works, a lot of them end up evaluating what they’re doing for the traditional backup.”

When Launch of Veeam Veeam Backup for Office 365 in 2016, many customers didn’t understand why they needed it, Orsini said. “They just didn’t understand that the data was their responsibility,” he said. “For the first two years, we had to educate people about the features Microsoft provides and then how they are exposed for all sorts of different reasons. Now I feel like the market is well educated. But we always meet people who just don’t realize it.

Self-service catering

One of the key new features of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 is improved security and support for MFA. Enhanced security also allows organizations and service providers to allow users to recover their own backups. When asked about his thoughts on allowing users to restore their own backups, Orsini welcomed the ability.

“We want to allow the customer as many capabilities as possible and let that be their decision,” Orsini said. “If they want to distribute this to their end users, that’s fine, and if they want to continue to make sure it goes through their support processes, that’s fine too.”

Allan from Veeam noted that with the new release supporting role-based access controls (RBAC), an organization or service provider can delegate access only to administrators who need to support the customer. For many organizations, letting customers restore their own backups can help reduce customer IT costs, Allan said. For service providers and channel partners, it will enable them to provide higher value-added services, he added.

Prioritizing backups to AWS and Azure

The new APIs allow service providers to tier customer backups to various AWS and Azure cloud storage services.

“If you’re backing up to Azure Blob storage, for example, you might want to store a copy in your cold tier of Azure Blob Storage for longer-term retention, which is cheaper,” Allan said.

Besides Azure Blob storage, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 also supports Glacier Amazon S3, S3 Deep Glacier Archives and Azure Archives.