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Veeam Software and Rubrik Announce Integration with Microsoft 365 Backup

• By David Ramel
• 07/19/2023

Microsoft partners Rubrik and Veeam Software announced during this week's Microsoft Inspire conference that their solutions now have integrations with Microsoft 365 Backup.

"The rise in ransomware encryption attacks and security breaches means organizations are making cybersecurity a priority to safeguard themselves from losing data and sensitive information," Microsoft said yesterday (July 18) in an Inspire 2023 post announcing Microsoft 365 Backup. "Organizations need to have a system to help them meet regulatory requirements."

The company said the new Microsoft 365 Backup solution provides recovery of OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange data "at unprecedented speeds for large volumes of data" and comes with a restore service level agreement (SLA) -- with everything kept within the Microsoft 365 security boundary:

• Backup all or select SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, and Exchange mailboxes in a tenant.
• Restore files, sites, and mailbox items in a tenant in parallel to a prior point-in-time in a granular manner or at massive scale.
• Search or filter content in backups using key metadata such as item or site names, owners, or event types within specific restore point date ranges.

It's part of Microsoft Syntex, a content understanding, processing and compliance service.

Microsoft noted, "You can also get the benefits of this technology by adopting a partner's application built on top of our Backup APIs," and that's exactly the integration announced by Rubrik and Veeam.

Microsoft expounded more on the third-party option: "You may choose to do this if you have a preferred partner or if you have non-Microsoft 365 data you also want to back up. Our partners can provide unique and powerful experiences within a single pane of glass for your Microsoft 365 and non-Microsoft 365 data sources. By leveraging the Backup APIs, partner apps can deliver the same unprecedented backup and restore speeds backed by Microsoft assurances -- all while keeping that Microsoft 365 data within the trusted Microsoft security and compliance domain."

Shortly after the announcement, the Microsoft partners touted their respective integrations with Microsoft 365 Backup on the newswires.

"Designed for joint Rubrik and Microsoft 365 customers, this new solution aims to help organizations strengthen their cyber resiliency in the face of growing cyberattacks," said Rubrik, a Zero Trust specialist, in a July 18 news release. "As a Microsoft partner, Rubrik's integration with Microsoft 365 Backup helps safeguard customers by providing faster Microsoft 365 restores, recovery of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), and comprehensive, centralized management of Microsoft 365 data and other SaaS and hybrid cloud workloads."

The new Rubrik integration with Microsoft 365 Backup will use Microsoft's new backup APIs to enhance Microsoft 365 recovery performance and scalability, keep data resilient, and deliver more comprehensive data protection with centralized data management in Rubrik Security Cloud, the company said.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said its integration with Microsoft 365 Backup empowers organizations to:

• Rapidly Restore Data in Bulk: Helps ensure business continuity with bulk restores and fast recovery of Microsoft 365 data en masse using Microsoft new backup APIs to maximize performance.
• Maximize Recoverability: Backup Azure AD users and groups by automatically recreating AD objects and recovering data with roles and permissions intact, and implement more holistic protection across Microsoft 365 Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.
• Centralize Management: Automate protection across Microsoft 365 and other SaaS, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments in a single platform.

Veeam, meanwhile, announced similar integration for its existing Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 offering on the very same day, via those same APIs, to bring customers and partners new capabilities for backup, recovery, ransomware protection and business continuity.

"Veeam plans to utilize this integration to deliver new innovations and experiences to Microsoft customers that need the very best data protection and ransomware recovery to keep their businesses running," the Columbus, Ohio-based specialist in data protection and ransomware recovery said in a news release.

The company published a Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 site, part of its Veeam Data Platform.

"Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 empowers you to securely back up Office 365 to any location, whether that be on-premises or in cloud object storage, including locations like Amazon S3, Azure Blob, IBM Cloud or S3 compatible providers," the site says. "You can also have it managed as-a-service."

The company said work to tie its product into Microsoft 365 Backup via APIs is underway and expects general availability of the updated solution within 90 days of the Microsoft 365 Backup service being available.

As far as when that will be, while Microsoft mentioned no GA date, it said a public preview is expected to begin in Q4, or October/November/December, of this year.