MCI Protects Against Ransomware, Enables 24/7 Restore Support in Office 365 with Cloud Backup
Success Highlights
Customer Location Geneva, Switzerland
Industry Professional Services
Platform Microsoft 365
Critical Needs
- Protection against ransomware
- Multiple long SLAs for data retention
- “Always-on” access to data during business critical RFP processes
- Granular restore and unlimited data retention
The Challenge
The goal of MCI’s IT department is to allow its talents to work from anywhere, anytime and on any device. After an initial foray into the Google cloud, MCI decided to move to Office 365.
“When I joined MCI…the group technology director at that time selected Google. This was unfortunately not the right solution for MCI as we had several business cases that couldn’t be managed properly,” said Edouard Duverger, Global Vice President Information Technology, MCI. “The cost reduction initially expected was actually a cost increase. After 8 months we decided to move to Office 365. “
Support expectations are high, but MCI’s IT department has answered the call.
“Our business runs 24x7 so we also need to provide a 24x7 end to end support team across the world with a very strong level 1 so that our users get a solution to their problem in seconds,” said Duverger. “We can proudly say our users can work remotely as efficiently as if they were at the office. This is a strong asset in this COVID-19 crisis.”
After being hit with a ransomware attack, MCI realized they needed additional data protection than what was being offered natively by Microsoft. Not only did they need to retain their documents for five years and financial documents for ten, they also needed the ability to execute a granular restore.
“We had a ransomware issue with a user’s OneDrive and we discovered that Microsoft only offered the possibility to restore the full OneDrive at a specific date and only in the last 14 days. They didn’t provide any granular backup nor an acceptable retention period,” said Duverger. “This is the main need that pushed us to look for a third-party solution provider.”
Global Vice President Information Technology, MCI
The AvePoint Solution
MCI evaluated multiple third-party Office 365 backup solution providers before selecting AvePoint Cloud Backup.
“When we decided to look for a third-party solution, we compared AvePoint to another provider and the AvePoint solution was much stronger and more user friendly,” said Duverger.
MCI chose the unlimited data retention option and is backing up all of their workloads in Office 365 (Groups, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, etc) up to 4 times a day.
“The unlimited retention period and unlimited storage capabilities is super flexible” said Duverger.
“We also find the granular restore capabilities in Exchange and Teams data useful, even though we will be using the granular restore capabilities in OneDrive and SharePoint more frequently,” said Duverger. “The solution is really powerful and allows you either to look for specific data or to browse in your entire backup at a specified date.”
MCI has also had tremendous success consolidating and re-organizing their SharePoint Online environment with AvePoint’s FLY migration tool.
The Road Ahead
MCI has been impressed with the tool, which they leverage multiple times a month.
“We use the solution to recover misplaced or lost from our use data about 5 times per month or less...but when we do, it is super efficient” said Duverger.
Cloud Backup has even helped in their business and sales operations with new clients. MCI finds particular value in Cloud Backup’s granular restore functionality and is running 4 backups per day.
“This is very useful when our teams are answering client RFPs as this gives us the insurance that our content is secured and readily available if anything is accidentally deleted or misplaced.”
When asked to characterize the overall experience with Cloud Backup, Duverger responded, “I am really satisfied with the solution, which is a must have with Office 365.”
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