MSP MostWare Provides Full Microsoft Teams Backup for Clients, Cuts Data Migration Time by 80%
Success Highlights
Customer Location Leiden, Netherlands
Industry Information Technology
Platform Microsoft 365
MostWare is a managed service provider (MSP) that works with Dutch companies to identify and deliver core IT needs for success in Microsoft 365. A Microsoft Gold Partner, MostWare employs a team of 30 to enable strategic solutions that reflect its motto: Inspire with IT.
Critical Needs
- Data protection and backup in M365
- Quick, accurate data migration
- Recovery and restore
- Easy deployment and fixed billing for users
The Challenge
MostWare takes pride in delivering the best IT services to its customers, including zero-trust security and modern workplace solutions. These efforts may include helping identify and resolve weak points that put a business at risk.
“We are really a knowledge company; we do not sell laptops and servers,” said Martijn Bloem, account manager at MostWare. “We are cloud-focused and Microsoft-focused.”
So after MostWare discovered that not all of its clients had a backup and restore plan for Microsoft 365 — leaving data open to deletion, compromise, or theft — the MSP wanted to provide a way to help.
Customers, after all, assumed their SaaS provider would offer protection.
“They’re thinking: ‘I’m in the cloud, I’m at Microsoft. They’ll take care of our backup,’” Bloem said. “I have to tell them, ‘No, they don’t.’”
Meanwhile, another issue persisted. With more of its clients moving to M365 for remote work and collaboration, MostWare needed a migration solution that could pull data from multiple origination points (both on-premises and cloud-based) and complete the jobs quickly and accurately.
That’s because MostWare’s past experiences using tools from CodeTwo and MigrationWiz fell short.
“There was always missing content, missing emails, folders with the wrong name or the wrong language,” Bloem said. “It was a lot of hassle.”
Account Manager, MostWare
The AvePoint Solution
MostWare cast a wide net in searching for a backup solution to offer its customers, including options from Barracuda Networks and Veeam.
“We examined all the possibilities, but they just didn’t feel like a finished product,” Bloem said. “AvePoint was the first to offer a solution with Teams backup. You are fully ahead of other companies.”
AvePoint Cloud Backup is a 100% SaaS solution that provides automated, comprehensive backup and restore services for M365, Salesforce and Dynamics 365. It features built-in storage and encryption and offers flexible pricing plans based on the number of users.
“AvePoint Cloud Backup was the only solution with no storage limitations and no extra costs,” Bloem said. “We saw that as a big advantage. You can tell customers, ‘This is the price per user,’ and that’s it — no surprises.”
Cloud Backup is also designed to meet the unique challenges of busy MSPs with a designated portal to help them manage the service and support needs of multiple clients. A provider may execute the tasks or offer a self-service function so customers can handle jobs themselves.
In either case, quick data recovery that exceeds standard retention policies in M365 is essential. This proved crucial after a MostWare customer had to produce emails that were deleted several months earlier (M365, when used out of the box, purges deleted emails after 30 days).
“There was an investigation from the government, and they asked us to deliver the emails from a specific timeframe,” Bloem said. Using Cloud Backup, the MSP could easily meet the request.
Soon after, MostWare added AvePoint FLY to handle customers’ migration needs.
FLY delivers a three-step approach — via a self-guided tool or with help from AvePoint — to migrate on-premises or cloud-hosted mail, content, and collaboration into M365 or SharePoint. Data can be migrated from existing Microsoft accounts or from SaaS providers such as Box, Google Drive and Slack.
And unlike MostWare’s prior migration headaches, the AvePoint solution has been hassle-free.
“FLY is a big time-saver; it’s simple to set up and it just works,” said Bloem, adding that FLY has resulted in an 80% drop in the amount of time spent handling migration. “It’s ‘click, go, and forget it.’ We love it.”
That will benefit a large, complex customer migration set to happen soon.
“We are migrating data from on-premises, Office 365 tenants, and Google Workspace,” Bloem said. “It’s around 11 or 12 TB.”
MostWare purchased AvePoint’s Cloud Backup and FLY through Tech Data, an IT solutions distributor, and has praised the ease of setup and delivery to its clients.
“We provision the customer and licenses into the system, and then it’s just a click to start up,” Bloem said. “We don’t need any assistance from the technical department at AvePoint, but when we have a question, it’s answered fast. The experience is very good for onboarding new users.”
The Road Ahead
By offering two critical services that help ensure safety and business continuity for its customers, MostWare has elevated its value as a trusted partner — and it has found a new revenue stream.
The growth is notable: The MSP recently doubled its clients’ use of AvePoint solutions to 5,000 seats.
With FLY and Cloud Backup supporting greater efficiency and reducing the risk of data loss, MostWare can deliver empowering solutions without disruption.
“Often, our customers don’t even know the technology we’re using, but they have the peace of mind,” Bloem said.
What’s more, MostWare found the costs of AvePoint tools beneficial to its own bottom line. FLY was two-thirds cheaper than the products of several competitors, Bloem said.
By avoiding self-built models for migration and backup with third-party solutions, users save time, money and maintenance. This is why MostWare recommends that MSPs consider partnering with AvePoint.
“You are delivering not only the software but also the solution,” Bloem said. “We don’t have any hassle with Azure subscriptions or maintaining our own hardware. For us, with AvePoint, we are dealing with one company, one solution, and that’s it.”
