Case Study – Blacktip
Critical Needs
- A solution to back up a wide variety of Office 365 applications
- Intuitive solution requiring minimal attention
Success Highlights
- Additional functionality for no additional time cost
- A flexible backup solution covers advanced Office 365 workloads
- Leveraging AvePoint’s Azure BLOB storage
“Cloud Backup has brought us so much additional value for the same cost. We are pleased to have the capability to span across far more applications.”
The Challenge
MSPs that supports Office 365 need to be able to handle the challenges that come with a broad and interconnected platform. For example, Blacktip’s clients currently or plan to leverage a combination of SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Office 365 Groups, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and other Office 365 services.
With so many applications being used, Blacktip is managing and protecting a combined 40 terabytes of data across their customer base. Blacktip also caters to each customer’s specific needs so many have different data retention policies that must be supported.
Blacktip IT has previously utilized other third-party solutions for backup. Their most recent experience was with SkyKick.
While they did not come across any backup or restoration issues, Blacktip soon realized that AvePoint’s Cloud Backup brought more functionality.
“SkyKick was reliable for backups of the Exchange workload. By comparison. AvePoint includes backup for Teams, Groups, SharePoint Online, and much more,” said Matthew Bookspan, CEO, Blacktip IT. “Additionally, we can now delegate by which O365 license for each client. Overall, AvePoint gave us much more value.”
The AvePoint Solution
Blacktip had been leveraging AvePoint’s migration solution, Elements, for several years and lead them to contact AvePoint to learn more about their product portfolio.
“We initially used your Migration solution–FLY–and was curious to what other solutions you have. The adoption process also went really well with no hiccups,” said Bookspan. “We then had a demo of Cloud Backup that was very impressive.”
Blacktip understands Microsoft and the cloud industry, knowing that applications are released and/or updated very often.
“We started selling backup in 2016. Microsoft Teams wasn’t even a product then. With AvePoint, we can now be confident when a client decides that they want to roll out something new or change their strategy that their data will be protected,” said Bookspan.
Cloud Backup gives users the option to leverage AvePoint’s Azure BLOB storage or bring their own storage.
Bookspan explains, “It makes more sense to us to use AvePoint’s storage. It became readily apparent that AvePoint’s storage was much more cost effective and fast. We also don’t want to be accountable for that infrastructure.”
The last major feature that caught Blacktip’s attention was the ability to automatically run up to four incremental backups daily.
“Four times a day is more than enough. Restorations are typically noticed later rather than sooner. It’s not usually an hour or even the same day, it’s typically a month. But, it’s great to have that level of comfort,” said Bookspan.
When asked about his experience with AvePoint’s Technical Support team, Bookspan stated “I don’t think we’ve ever had to engage support, due to the software user experience. Nevertheless. the team at AvePoint people is great. We don’t know anyone who doesn’t like AvePoint.”
The Bottom Line
Blacktip has now added another component to their solution portfolio that has provided their clients much more value at no additional cost. Blacktip is now using FLY, DocAve Migrator, and Cloud Backup.
However, the partnership will not stop there. Blacktip is already inquiring about other solutions such as Report Center and Cloud Governance to further strengthen their offerings and support AvePoint.
“Cloud Backup has brought us so much additional value for the same cost. We are pleased to have the capability to span across far more applications,” said Bookspan.
Blacktip
With an incredible level of service delivery, Blacktip has built a reputation of exceptional quality for its clients. Where Blacktip excels is at the business layer–helping business to be better, more efficient, more competitive and ultimately, more profitable. The Managed Service Provider (MSP) manages 2,000 Office 365 licenses for around 30 clients.
Blacktip began their partnership with AvePoint in 2018 when they adopted the FLY migration solution. After months of success with FLY, Blacktip learned about the superior functionality and benefits of Cloud Backup compared to their previous solution with SkyKick.
Read the full case study here.
