Learn how the school saves a day of backup management each month with AvePoint.
Success Highlights
Customer Location United Kingdom
Industry Education
Platform Microsoft 365
The independent school is renowned for its commitment to excellence in education and for providing a safe and supportive environment for learning. With over 500 students and 1000 staff, the school understands the critical role of collaboration tools such as Microsoft 365 in achieving its goal. To ensure seamless access and full utilization of Microsoft 365 benefits, the school prioritizes reliable data protection and backup, guaranteeing the availability and accessibility of its digital systems.
Critical Needs
- Cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution
- Complete protection across Microsoft 365 suite
- User-friendly solution
- Quick and easy restores
The Challenge
Microsoft 365 is crucial for the independent school’s virtual classrooms, coursework sharing, and colleague collaboration. However, with Microsoft's 30-day backup limitation, there is a risk of accidentally losing information.
Microsoft's restore feature also did not offer the ability to restore the folder structure, which was essential in cases where entire mailboxes or folders within mailboxes were deleted – a situation that occurs roughly 5-6 times a year, according to the school's IT Systems Engineer.
The school tried a few other backup solutions. The first was unreliable, slow, and difficult to use. They then tried Veeam's backup solution, but they were not satisfied with the on-site storage requirements that consumed significant resources in terms of time, effort, and costs.
To address these issues, the school wanted a seamless and reliable cloud-to-cloud backup solution that would not require additional hardware or software maintenance.
The fact that I don't need to touch [Cloud Backup] speaks volumes about its reliability and ease of use. The backup system runs seamlessly in the background, eliminating the need to think about it and freeing up IT staff to focus on other tasks. The occasional email notification that the backup system ran successfully is good enough for me.
Independent School
The AvePoint Solution
The school found its solution with AvePoint Cloud Backup, a comprehensive and reliable cloud-to-cloud backup solution. The 100% SaaS solution offers four automatic backups a day and provides built-in storage, encryption, flexible pricing plans, and more for Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Google Workspace, Azure, Power Platform, and Dynamics 365.
After evaluating two other SaaS backup providers, the school ultimately chose AvePoint for its pricing and superior solution. The school was particularly drawn to Cloud Backup due to its user-friendly interface and efficient restore capabilities, which outperformed their previous solution. By storing data off-site, the school also gained peace of mind knowing that their critical information would remain protected in case of on-site issues.
Moreover, the maintenance requirements of Cloud Backup were significantly lower than their previous on-site backup solution, saving the school valuable time and resources. “With on-site, you have to do a lot more – managing storage, multiple devices, errors,” says the IT Systems Engineer. “With Cloud Backup, I don’t have to do much at all; it just works.” He estimates they save multiple hours a week, or a day per month, thanks to Cloud Backup’s seamless operation.
“The fact that I don't need to touch it speaks volumes about its reliability and ease of use. The backup system runs seamlessly in the background, eliminating the need to think about it and freeing up IT staff to focus on other tasks. The occasional email notification that the backup system ran successfully is good enough for me.”
The school has had to perform a few restorations, from files to entire mailboxes, that were easy, seamless, and took only a third of the time compared to one of their previous backup solutions. And because Cloud Backup captures changes to files and folders in real-time, the latest versions are always recoverable, ensuring that teachers and students can quickly find and access the files they need.
During one incident, the IT Systems Engineer recovered an entire Teams Channel, which contained lesson recordings and critical class materials, within 20 minutes, including the time spent investigating the issue. This quick recovery saved the teacher significant inconvenience and time as they would have had to recreate the materials from scratch otherwise.
The school has faced minimal issues with Cloud Backup, but when they did need assistance, AvePoint’s support was able to resolve the issues quickly, reinforcing the school's decision to switch to Cloud Backup.
The Road Ahead
With AvePoint Cloud Backup, the school gained a reliable and efficient backup solution that instills confidence in their data security. The IT Systems Engineer and his team save valuable time, while students, teachers, and staff know their critical files are always protected and accessible.
As the IT Systems Engineer put it, "With Cloud Backup, we have peace of mind knowing that our data is secure."
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