With AvePoint Online Services, we are able to schedule a full backup every month and incremental backups every Saturday, which allow us to use our time and resources for other projects.
To enable better collaboration and centralise important project documentation for its technical team and field engineers, MJ Flood Technology implemented Office 365 – SharePoint Online. While SharePoint Online was faster and much more user-friendly than the file transfer protocol (FTP) systems it previously relied on, the organisation faced challenges in protecting its 100 gigabytes (GB) of critical project data stored in the system. To have backups available beyond Microsoft’s 14-day retention policy, MJ Flood Technology implemented an in-house backup strategy. “On a weekly basis, we backed up everything on external hard drives,” said Alexandra Prisacaru, SharePoint Administrator at MJ Flood Technology. “It took an entire day to perform manual backups. It was very time-consuming. If any IT issues came up on those days, I didn’t have time to handle it.”
As MJ Flood Technology’s 200 end users collaborate on critical documents such as statements of work and training materials, the organisation’s SharePoint Online environment continues to grow. With more data to back up on premises, the organisation knew hardware costs would continue to increase, and IT administrators would lose even more time due to the need to perform manual backups. Additionally, MJ Flood Technology had no solution in place to easily restore Exchange Online content at the item level, which meant more time lost if an end user needed an email recovered.
To address its immediate data protection needs, MJ Flood Technology implemented AvePoint Online Services (AOS), a Microsoft Azure-hosted SaaS solution for Office 365 management. Specifically, the organisation uses AOS' backup and restore capabilities to ensure Office 365 content is protected and available at any time. “Prior to deploying AOS, if someone permanently deleted an email from Exchange Online, we could not easily retrieve it.” Prisacaru said. “With AOS, you can restore SharePoint Online and Exchange Online content at the item level – and it only takes a couple of minutes. That’s something we just didn’t have before with Office 365 native capabilities.”
In addition to granular restore capabilities, MJ Flood Technology also gained the ability to schedule automatic platform and incremental backups outside of business hours – resulting in increased productivity for IT administrators and no business interruption for end users. “AvePoint Online Services has definitely made our lives easier,” Prisacaru said. “We no longer have to spend our time on manual backups. Now, we are able to schedule a full backup every month and incremental backups every Saturday, which allows us to use our time and resources for other projects.”
Not only is AvePoint Online Services a time-saver, but it also eliminated MJ Flood Technology’s need for hardware dedicated to backups. Using AOS, MJ Flood Technology has the option to store backups in the cloud with Microsoft Azure. “In the long term, backing up our data on external hard drives would have been an expensive solution for us,” Prisacaru said.
In addition to filling the organisation’s need for a SharePoint Online data protection solution, AOS also offers MJ Flood Technology many more Office 365 management capabilities. “We saw that AOS is more than a backup and restore solution,” Prisacaru said. “You can assign permissions and move content around SharePoint Online, all with full fidelity and from one console. I don’t even need to log into our SharePoint Online portal to assign permissions.”
As a fully-hosted SaaS solution, AvePoint Online Services requires no installation or agents, which is another time saver for Prisacaru. “Normally, when you have a solution as comprehensive as AOS, you need a lot of set up and installation,” Prisacaru said. “AvePoint Online Services is easy to manage.”
AvePoint Online Services' backup and restore capabilities allow MJ Flood Technology’s SharePoint administrators to schedule automated SharePoint Online and Exchange Online backups – saving them eight hours per week previously devoted to manual backups. MJ Flood Technology’s IT team also has the ability to granularly restore content from those backups in less than five minutes. “Now that we can schedule backups, I can use that time to improve our intranet or work on other projects,” Prisacaru said. “With AOS, we have full confidence that we can retrieve what we want, when we want. We can now restore an item to its previous location, so important documents are continually available. It is a good tool to have and has definitely made our lives easier.”
MJ Flood Technology is a leading cloud services and IT infrastructure specialist. Its business includes a full ICT portfolio incorporating network infrastructure and storage, data protection and security and cloud-based managed services. Its team of technical professionals are accredited to the highest industry standards and the company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. MJ Flood Technology is part of the MJ Flood Group of companies, a wholly-owned Irish operation established in 1935.
With AvePoint Online Services, we are able to schedule a full backup every month and incremental backups every Saturday, which allow us to use our time and resources for other projects.