Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 Reviews

Veeam Backup is primarily used by companies already using Veeam to expand their backup to protect their data or who have moved to Office 365 and want to be able to backup to Office 365 in the cloud.

Using Veaam Backup means that there is a backup for Office 365 that can be restored from, rather than just piggybacking off what Office 365 provides, which is more of an archiving capability.

The most valuable feature is the capability to back up not only to the cloud but also to your local environment so a copy of your data can be kept on-prem.

Veaam Backup can be confusing for customers when they start trying to understand how to use the product in multiple environments. So if they're using it in both a cloud and an on-prem environment, it can get a little bit confusing as to how that actually happens and how it works.

I've been using Veeam Backup for Office 365 for about three years.

The latest version of Veaam Backup is very stable.

Veaam Backup goes up to 5,000 email users before you need to do another implementation. A lot of their customers are within that size, so it works for them, but once you get into really large corporate customers, it gets more complicated.

Veaam's technical support is very good; they're very responsive to customers and come out with upgrades as needed.

The initial setup is simple, with deployment taking a relatively short period of time, about a couple of hours.

When customers move their Office environment out to Azure, they save all of the resources they would use for Exchange, as well as the storage. 

Veaam Backup is licensed per mailbox, which customers like because it's per user and so they don't have to pay for shared mailboxes. Veaam also provides flexible one-to-five-year subscription licensing and no longer use perpetual licenses. There are additional costs for keeping data in the cloud, e.g. for Azure licensing.

Veaam Backup has recently added MS Teams to the programs they cover, which was a big improvement. If you're an existing Veaam customer who has on-prem backup, I would advise integrating your on-prem backup with the Office 365 backup to get a more cost-effective, easy-to-use solution. I'd give Veaam backup a rating of eight out of ten because it's easy to use and solves a customer problem with its restore point functionality.

It is mostly used for PST from Outlook and OneDrive. It is a good solution, and we don't have any issues with any customers.

The solution provided a good recovery point for our customers. The solution is user-friendly, and we don't have any issues. We were able to recover anything we wanted because it was not compromised.

The solution's integration and exchange with email-related things are very, very powerful. The solution is also easy to manage and work with.

The solution should provide more integration with Teams and SharePoint Online to perform other tasks.

We have been selling Veeam Backup for Office 365 for six to eight years.

The solution is very stable. I don't have any issue with it.

I rate Veeam Backup for Office 365 a ten out of ten for scalability. It is good for the purposes that we use it for.

In my organization, 100 people are using the solution, and we do not have plans to increase the usage.

Since the stability of the solution is very good, we don't have any issues to report. I don't have a lot of experience with the support team, but I think they are good.

The initial setup for Veeam Backup for Office 365 was easy and not complex at all.

We have had an ROI with this solution.

The solution is very, very, very, cheap. It is a good solution, and its price is not bad.

I am using the latest version of Veeam Backup for Office 365.

I would suggest buying this solution if it fits everything the users need because some suite products, like Project Server, are not available for everyone.

Overall, I rate Veeam Backup for Office 365 a nine out of ten.

Veeam Backup for Office 365 has good security, and I also like the process they use for backups.

The initial setup of Veeam Backup for Office 365 is straightforward.

Pricing is an area for improvement, and I would rate it at five out of ten.

Overall, I would rate Veeam Backup for Office 365 at nine on a scale from one to ten.

The solution is used to backup customers' Office 365 data. It is not really an MSP product. It's on-premise. In order for you to comply with GDPR, if you are an MSP, the only reason to really do that is if you set it up in your own environment and on virtual machines and you literally have to lock yourself out of that machine and give the customer full access to it.

The other thing is, to comply with GDPR and with Veeam for Office 365, is the backups need to be encrypted. There's no encryption. What we did was we basically encrypted the hard drives that come from Bitlocker and only then did we get compliant with GDPR. That part was quite tricky. 

It works well if you are not in Europe. It's great if you are not an MSP.

The pricing is reasonable.

Technical support is great.

You cannot back up to a network share, you cannot back it up directly to the cloud location. To fix issues is quite tough with it.

I asked them before, not even long ago, "Okay, so can we back up now to a duplication?" and they still said, "No, still only to a local drive." Having it back up to more than a local drive would be ideal.

They need to enable the encryption of backups so that nobody can gain access unless they have encryption details. When you need to restore, you could then just pick the credentials from a saved credential that you do not have to manually enter. 

If there's a virtual machine or a machine that's extra storage, the potential that somebody else can log into your infrastructure and could potentially be malicious and destroy your entire infrastructure is very high. There's just a whole list of it. For that reason, if you're an MSP, stay away.

The reporting needs to be better.

I've used the solution from the time it was launched.

Sometimes the services crash and we just have to go in there. The problem is the reporting. Since it does not link to the lead service provider console, you do not know what is going on. So you have to literally monitor the thing manually. There's no real reporting of the actual machine, and since it has to be deployed on the physical machine, that's your limitation. 

It is not really scalable. It's only Windows-compliant. You cannot install it on anything else. 

We have about 50 virtual machines. We're actually running at a loss.

The support for it is good. They basically do what they need to do. They are very quick to help.

Neutral

Initially, the setup is straightforward. However, once compliance is in play, it gets complex. 

The initial deployment was quite quick. We just basically installed it. It takes about an hour or so, and that's very quick for backup notification. The actual configuration was initially quite quick, so you can set it up very quickly. 

If you do not need to comply with GDPR, you are fine. The minute you start to comply with GDPR, it becomes very complex, and there are a lot of extra tweaks and stuff that you need to do in order to do that.

To set it up, you just install it on a machine and add your Office 365 admin credentials. Then you get a list of what you want. You just pick the accounts that you want to protect and click next and select your backup application which has to be a physical volume. It starts backing up, eventually.

The licensing of it is quite cost-effective. However, if you need to comply with GDPR, for you as an MSP, it can become quite expensive since you literally have to give the customer some of your infrastructure to do that.

Currently, everything is moved to VMware licensing, which is month to month.

If you are not staying in Europe and you want to use it, that's awesome, go for it. If you are an MSP, don't use it.

I'd advise, if you're an MSP, don't use it. It's only going to give you headaches. That said, if you are not an MSP and you have a direct client, this will be a great tool for you to basically download or make a copy of your 365 environments. The cost is not too bad. Just make sure that the virtual machine has got enough space - probably double the amount of space that your current Office 365 environment is taking up - to make space for you to have incremental space. Otherwise, you'll have a bit of a problem.

Considering its limitations, including local backups, not really good reporting, and no encryption, I would rate the product at around a four out of ten.

We use it for different workloads like the VBR, Veeam Backup and Recovery. We use it to back up our virtual servers, physical servers, and our SQL database backups. We also use Veeam to back up the user mailboxes from 365.

There were only a couple of restores that were required from backdated data backup. It was good to get it to restore there fast. For the virtual machines or SQL databases, we do get the recovery done quite often, and it offers a faster recovery time.

All the features are good.

There's a feature to back copy the backup from the local repository to, say, AWS or Azure cloud storage. That's quite helpful.

It was easy to set up.

The solution can scale. 

It is stable.

There is a free version available. 

If Veeam could offer backup as a service for data backup and recovery, that would be great. We'd like something like what Druva is offering at the moment.

Veeam currently does not have immutable storage, so if they can introduce immutable storage for ransomware protection, that would be great.

We have found the free version to be less stable. 

I've been using the solution for a year and a half. 

While the licensed version has been relatively stable, we have had issues with the free version of the solution. We only had a few problems. It wasn't a lot. I'd rate the overall stability eight out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. 

It's basically for administrators. It's only useful for administrators and if there's a request for data recovery they only perform it for the user. The end user is not going to directly use this product. We have three admins on the solution currently. 

I'm using both Druva and Veam, and I'm looking at Rubrik.

Both Veeam and Druva are good products. That said, in terms of functionality, Veeam has more options.  They have multiple solutions to choose from. 

The solution offered an easy initial setup. I'd rate the ease of implementation ten out of ten. Overall, it shouldn't take more than an hour to deploy it. 

I did a session with a Windows server with the latest operating system. After installing the VBR software on that and then installing the credentials which we're going to use for the backup and adding the backup repository, then external cloud repositories, I could make the backup policies and handle testing.

So far, we haven't really needed to handle maintenance. It's running well. 

I handled the initial setup in-house. 

The pricing is reasonable. I would rate it eight out of ten. We have just a standard license. 

I'm an administrator and an end-user. 

It's a very versatile product. It is easy to install and use and it is pretty stable. I'd rate it nine out of ten. 

We are distributors for Veeam.

The use case for this solution is for backup. 

The challenging part is that people don't understand the importance of having a backup of Office 365. They think that their data is on the cloud and it's safe. They don't feel the need to back it up. Once they learn about the Microsoft shared responsibility model, they find out that Microsoft is not responsible for the data.

If, for example, an employee deletes his emails because he is angry with the management and leaves the company, the company will need a backup to restore at some point.

There are various reasons for backing up Office 356. There could be a cyberattack, and there are compliance requirements. 

Even if Microsoft will protect their data, they will still need a copy of it, and the software will help with that. 

Some people have a hybrid setup and will not only have Office 365, but they will be using a mix of Exchange on-premises and Office 365 that they need a backup of. 

The most important part is to have your data accessible and restorable at any point.

The support for deduplication appliances is an area to consider for improvement. 

They don't have native integration with deduplication of storage. 

Also, they said that they were going to release a feature, with the ability to backup copies, having another copy of a backup is very much needed, rather than just one copy. 

This feature is known in Veeam in their on-premises solutions but is not included in Office 365.

I am an expert in Veeam Backup for Office 365.

I have been dealing with Veeam as a company for five years, and Veeam Backup for Office 365 as a product for three years.

I am not able to tell you how many customers we have because we are in the distribution business, and there are many. 

We mainly support an ecosystem of partners of no less than a thousand partners, who also sell this product to many customers. Veeam is the fastest, growing vendor in the backup industry, and it is difficult to keep track of how many customers are using the product.

Technical support in Veeam is good. It usually doesn't fail you. If you face any issues, the response times are good and the engineers' quality is also good. Most of the time.

Veeam Backup for Office 365 is a Windows software application, and you can install it on-premises or you can install it on the cloud.

As long as you have a Windows Server, the installation is really easy. 

The download, installation, and configuration will not take more than 20 minutes.

It is strictly subscribed on a per-user basis.

I would recommend this solution. If you have Office 365 you should have a backup. Veeam will help you to do that.

I would rate Veeam Backup for Office 365 an eight out of ten.

We use Veeam because — while Microsoft provides a terrific environment called Office 365 — they do not back up files that are stored there. The files most customers are concerned about are OneDrive and SharePoint files, but they often overlook their mailboxes and the Exchange piece of Office 365. It is the customer's responsibility to actually back that data up, which Microsoft does not do a good job in sharing with you. We had moved all of our file server shares to OneDrive and SharePoint, and we were just over a terabyte of data. To make sure they were being backed up properly, I implemented Veeam Office 365 Backup.  

It has given us some peace of mind when it comes to backing up Office 365 files that Microsoft does not include in the 365 backup structure.  

What I like in this particular module within Veeam is that it allows you to restore mailboxes selectively. Instead of having to restore all the mailboxes that you have backed up, you can be more targeted. Let's say you had a request from the vice president to get their entire mailbox restored. They are typically the guys who blow up their mailboxes. I could restore just their mailbox from the backup and no one else's. But it gets even more granular as I can also restore individual folders inside their mailbox. It gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of what you are able to restore.  

In SharePoint and OneDrive, you are able to restore down to the file level, which is really handy. It gives you a lot of restore options. Their GUI is just stupid easy to use. You basically go in, you browse the different modules — whether it is Exchange or SharePoint or OneDrive as the parent — you click on your tenant name, then you go to exchange the mailboxes, and then you go under the individual user that you want to restore. That could be the whole mailbox, or a folder, or whatever. It just takes a couple of clicks and it is done. It just works.  

One of the things that should probably be improved is the pricing model. The price is based on a per-user charge. I wish that was not the case because it is not really in use by most of the users. It is not all that often that people need something restored. I do not know how they would change it exactly, but it just does not seem appropriate. If they can change their pricing model, that is only going to help to get more people to adopt it. They could make it more affordable.  

A better pricing model would just make sense and be better for some companies. We do not have an issue, thank goodness. But some companies might be a little bit strapped for cash. As a solution that completes their backup regimen, it is a requirement whether they know it or not. You hate to see the pricing make the decision and exclude people from something that they essentially need. If they could make it more affordable, that would be better for everybody.  

As far as adding features, unless Office changes, they do not need to change their feature set. It is already feature-rich. It has a really nice GUI and it is very easy to manage once you get logged in. So no, right now I would not change anything. Change is not always a good thing.  

I have been using Veeam backup for a couple of years.  

The stability of the system is awesome. It all depends on what the underlying operating system is. If you are running a Windows Server, that is your biggest worry. But if you are doing all of this in Linux, then it is solid.  

The application itself is solid. You do not have to upgrade memory. You do not have to do anything like that. It is very solid. Assuming your underlying OS is running well — even if it is Windows — and you have got the current version, that is great. The product itself is very stable. I think Veeam goes a long way to validate and test this product before they send it out to the market. I find it to be very good and reliable.  

As to scalability, right now, if you wanted to expand usage because you have more users, you have to buy more licenses. There is really no limit. The only limit is your wallet. That is also why I like the idea of a different licensing model: so I do not have to constantly consider the number of licenses. That cost depends on how many people you are going to onboard just makes it cumbersome. You could pay upfront each year, and try to figure out how many licenses we are going to need, but that is just a guess. We do that and I have never taken licenses back, so I do not know how good Veeam would be with that type of request. But that is another reason why a different licensing model makes sense: it would allow me to scale a little bit easier. You change the number of users in an organization far more frequently than you change the number of cores.  

Currently, in our organization, I would say there are about 50 or 60 users on Veeam Office 365 Backup. I would call that relatively small. Veeam has lots of other companies as customers that are way larger. There are integrators out there that include this stuff in modeling for companies big and small. I'm pretty confident that it scales easily even for large organizations.  

We do not have anybody on staff to deploy and maintain the system. It is just another part of the architecture and one of the many hats that we all wear. After the set up is done, it is just a part of the monitoring checklist. You come in and get yourself all squared away. You check the backups — what completed, and what did not — then you check these backups to be sure everything backed up successfully. If it did, that is great. If not, you have to find out why. We have internal policies behind how we address failed backups. So there are a certain number of retries that we do before it leads to having to really research a failure as an issue.  

I have used the tech support for the product. They are all very good. They have a great website and there are a lot of self-help documents. That is typically what they point you to when you need assistance. But all you have to say is that you are not really so technical and you need a walk-through — even if it is stretching the truth a little bit — and they will help you out. Somebody doing the installation could download the right document, but even then they will walk you through it. It is quick and hardly takes them any time anyway.  

Of the other software that I used prior to Veeam for backup or recovery solutions, probably the most relevant is NetBackup from Veritas. We used the Veritas NetBackup Appliance. Veeam for Office 365 is more targeted.  

The setup for the product was straight forward. The actual deployment of the product was very quick. I would say it was inside of 20 minutes. After the installation, it has to go out and discover all the mailboxes and folders and stuff, and that can take a couple of hours. So I would say the amount of time it took in total was probably two or three hours. The actual keyboard time, was about 20 minutes. It depends a bit on how big the environment is. If you have a huge environment then it will take more than two hours to do all the discovery.  

We did the implementation all by ourselves. We did not need anything like an integrator or tech support or help from the vendor.  

I think the pricing model is wrong. Veeam itself is licensed according to the number of cores you have on your system. Maybe in pricing the backup solution they could just match that same model. So instead of having the Veeam license — which you have to have in order to use the Office 365 backup — and tacking on a per-user charge, they could base the cost on the CPU cores instead. Just tell clients that if they want the additional Office 365 Backup option it increases the cost by whatever amount pr billing period. It simplifies billing and cost tracking. Anything they could do to lower the actual cost of using the product would be good.  

But in the end, right now, the Office 365 Backup component is licensed separately per user. It works in conjunction with the basic Veeam license so you need that too, but it is a separate tool in terms of licensing. You can not get it independently.  

Before choosing this product, we did not actually evaluate any competition, which is not the usual due diligence. Veeam does not really have competition in the Office 365 Backup space. That really made the decision a slam dunk for me. It was the one product that solved the issue and it works.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Veeam Backup for Office 365 as a seven or eight. Choosing between the two, I give it a seven. I have to ding them a little bit because of the licensing. I am really not thrilled with that.  

We've been using Veeam Backup for about a year. We get a lot of inquiries, whether it be from our partners or from end-users, who would like to backup their Office 365. They inquire about how to do so and the prerequisites, what exactly is required. Generally speaking, their concern is about how much storage is needed for the backup. Every company has a different backup policy, different RPOs, and different pre-pension policies. We help them determine how much storage they are going to need. That's basically it. That's how we deal with it.

A lot of customers have the misconception that when they host their data on the cloud, the cloud providers actually protect the data. Meanwhile, cloud providers are generally responsible for the availability of the service. The data is always the responsibility of whoever owns it. Nobody can ensure the data will always be there. So there are many news cases that happened. Sometimes people lose data on Office 365. For example, some emails get deleted and they seek the attention of Office 365. On average it has been discovered that it takes about 140 days to discover the email was deleted.

Employees can get disgruntled all of a sudden. There have also been hardware attacks on Office 365, even though there is cybersecurity in Microsoft. Nothing is bulletproof in the cybersecurity industry, so it's always good to have a second copy of your data.

A really good feature I saw is backing up company emails for the enterprises. This offers an easy ability to restore to the cloud.

The other really amazing part is that it doesn't just stop at Office 365. For example, some people have a hybrid setup. They have non-private exchange email software and then they have a hybrid with the Office 365. It is useful for that use case because it can back up both of them at the same time.

A lot of people when looking for backups usually consider a lot of sites. With the Veeam Backup application, you can have really good compression and deduplication ratios. That means you can save lots of space on your backup storage. With Veeam for Office 365 for companies that require long-term retention, they often complain about the capacity storage it might take. There's no deduplication on that level. Basically, storage capacity can be required to be huge in some cases.

But the good part is that exclusions can be made to save on the storage space. The general feedback I get from the market is that there is no deduplication.

The capacity storage is a challenge everywhere in the backup industry. The general feedback people are coming back to us about is that there is no deduplication based on it. There is compression which uses the native Office 365 compression, but there is no deduplication feature just like in Veeam Backup application.

I'm not sure technically if it's possible to deduplicate Office 365 dockets. However, I'd like to see native page support for Veeam Backup for Office 365 to be able to back up to the tapes. I'm at a company with long retention and I backup disk space storage, so it's going to cost me a fortune. Meanwhile, if I preserve a short term retention plan, like Backup, if I need to have backups for three years for example, then I'll need huge amounts of storage. Now storage can be expensive or it can be cheap. This base storage is useful for short time retention. For example, keep it for one month, and then you can archive it on tape for the rest of the year. So, this is not good in a situation where a company needs to restore from a long time retention, and tape is really inexpensive. 

I'd like to see Veeam Backup for Office 365 backup to tapes, support cloud object storage. Now, the new trend for archiving data is not just on tapes and data deduplication appliances. This is considered really old technology. Deduplication appliances are only fit for the enterprise customers but they can be expensive and save lots of data.

So the only real need for it is in enterprise but some small companies would like to archive their data for a long time. They find financial challenges to do so. Nowadays, they look to this new cloud object storage with cloud providers like Azure Blob Storage, Amazon S3, or IBM. That can really be useful for archival. So, basically supporting archive tier storage for the Veeam Backup for Office 365. Archive tier storage, whether it be the deduplication appliances, cloud object storage, or tapes.

But like I said, it's probably on the way. Veeam distributes new products as well. It's not as old as Office 365 for the market. When you look at Veeam Backup and Replication and how long they have come, it's probably on the way there. And there are programs to do all that I have mentioned if the client is also using Veeam Backup with Replication. You can basically install Veeam Backup for Office 365 with a VM and just back it up using the Veeam Backup with Replication, then you can get use out of the deduplication and archive to the cloud by a virtual machine. There are workarounds too.

Although the Veeam Backup for Office 365 doesn't natively support all the things that I told you about, like archiving to tape, deduplication appliance, or cloud object storage, it can always be installed in a virtual machine and then that virtual machine can be backed up by Veeam Backup with Replication, which supports all of this. It's considered a workaround, not native support.

To be honest, it's pretty stable. It's the third major release for it. It is showing lots of improvements. Not any issues with the product at all, whether it be with backing-up or the servers. Office 365 itself is pretty new to the regional market, where we are. It's not a new product, but its prevalence is starting to hit Saudi Arabia distribution.

I can't say I've used it that much, but I have used it enough to consider it a stable software.

This is the big one about Veeam in general. The good part about Veeam is that they make modular solutions, so you can install Veeam Backup for Office 365 and Veeam Backup and Replication in one single server. You can do an all in one installation, and roll it out.

Some scenarios may require that you scale-out. You can dedicate modular components to specific services. In that case, you need backup for Office 365, that's not like Veeam Backup and Replication.

There are basically three major Veeam components for Office 365: Backup Server, Backup Repository, and Backup Proxy. In short, Backup Server is the granular solution. It's basically responsible for managing the tasks and jobs of all the other components. Backup Proxy is basically the muscle of the solution. So, this is what actually is interacting with Office 365 and doing the actual backup. It is coordinating Veeam Backup Server to do that. Veeam Backup for Office 365 Repository is where you store your backups. Any storage that is presented to the Windows operating system, you can use as a storage for the Veeam backup storage for 365. So long as you have internet connectivity, no firewalls in place (or specifically the required firewall forced to be open would be the Office 365), and you have the administrative privileges for Office 365, it's an easy task.

There are a lot of companies that use Veeam backup for Office 365, and those companies range from 15 users to 5,000 users. There are a few use cases. Some companies have compliance standards that force them to have a specific backup policy and a specific retention policy. That is kind of hard to do manually. Some people just prefer to have a solution that also meets that and makes it easy. Some people just want to take control of their own details. Some people are actually upset about protecting their data.

Most of the users we deal with are shared. They are behind the entire IT environment. The main pitch from our end is based on the fact that this edition is really easy to use, and we think you should try it and see that. There are a lot of challenges in the market. Our companies don't usually have dedicated IT personnel for everything. They usually share one IT person or all the IT folks for all the workflows of the IT department. 

So, it's basically a decision criterion for them, whether they want to have a solution that's really easy to use and manage. It doesn't require more than one person, but from a backup perspective, the best practice is always to have some redundancy on it. You can have two, but you don't really need two people. It's just for the case that if someone doesn't show up to work or something goes wrong with backups and that guy is not available, someone else should be there. But purely speaking, it's a one man job, and he can also share with the other IT workload.

Veeam is good in general, from a technical support perspective. I've really enjoyed the fact that they have a really high response rate. You can just open a support ticket and call them on the phone so you know that they got it. You refer to the ticket number and you just have a remote engineer also engage in technical support. They are very supportive in general, I love the support there.

I enjoy it because it helps me a lot when I am with a client and an issue presents itself that I'm not able to resolve. I open a support ticket, call the toll free number, and have an engineer engage with me within five minutes, which is amazing for my establishment. They will start working on the problem and resolve it.

It's as easy as downloading the file, installing it, and then simply entering the administrative accounts for Office 365. You also need internet access. It's really an easy task to do with Veeam Backup Office 365. Literally just clicking next, next, next.

So from an ease of use perspective, it's really easy. It's just that when enterprise companies come to deploy it, they might face a bit of a challenge in this region specifically when it comes to internet bandwidth, because sometimes in Saudi Arabia bandwidth is a huge restriction for organizations that have, for example, 5,000 users or huge mailboxes. It's really expensive to have corporate internet in Saudi Arabia. So it can be a challenge backing up these environments under restricted bandwidths. It's not a restriction from the solution. It's just a regional restriction. Other markets can enjoy the privilege of backing up without any issues related to bandwidth.

It's also deployable on the cloud. That's an option. But in our region, some government entities don't allow that.

I did a proof of concept a week ago. We were backing up a physical server using the other product. That took us about half an hour. During that half an hour, I downloaded Veeam Backup for Office 365 from the website. I joined the client's Office 365 account. I downloaded and installed Veeam Backup for Office 365. Then I asked for the client to enter his credentials for the Office 365, and boom. We were seeing all the mailboxes and we just started to back up from there.

Backup does take some time, of course, because the mailbox was pretty huge. Generally, ease of use and configuration is pretty simple. It's easy to use, straightforward, actually.

Part of my job is that I install this software for proof of concepts. Some clients come to us with concerns like, "How do I backup my Office 365?" We'll provide the proof concept for them. I do that as well.

There are other options, because Veeam backup for Office 365 is the software, which you can put on your own platform by backing up from the internet, or you can install it on any Windows VM on the cloud as well. There are other options like NetApp, which has software in the server, in which you don't have to really worry about installing the software onto anything. Or you can install the software, but they'll back up the data for you and keep it. Some clients may not be keen towards that with the privacy component. Also, some clients want to have a copy of the data with themselves.

However, it is also heedless when it comes to infrastructure resources. You don't have to worry about having servers put in place, dedicated for Veeam backup for Office 365 and the storage that you need, and then worry about the bandwidth that you need. These kinds of operational costs are considerations as well. I've heard about NetApp having Office 365 backup solutions, but I've never even thought deep into it. Also, some clients kind of do the backup manually as well. It's kind of a tedious job, though. Maybe when it's a small environment, it can be manageable, but for a big environment, it can be a nightmare.

Honestly speaking, lots of people just look at it from a business point of view. They say, "I just have a business need. I just want to backup my Office 365 data." But they don't take much concern into what that also requires. Generally speaking, from a backup point of view, the biggest concern is what percentage of data you'd like to backup and the capacity of this data.

Also consider what the recovery point objectives are, meaning how frequently do you want to do backups. What kind of retention policy are you trying to achieve? The shorter the retention policy, the smaller the storage capacity you need, and the lower the cost of the solution. At the same time, some people are tied by their clients and by specific retention policies. So, tell people they need to archive their backups into deduplication appliances to save on the cost of long-term archival. However, that's not natively possible with Veeam backup for Office 365 yet. I believe it can be done manually, though.

That's what clients need to be careful of and the really important part is to make sure they have enough storage for what they are trying to achieve as they prepare their backup plan. The internet bandwidth for this also needs to be considered. It is best to have a dedicated channel for this. Think about the use of backups and make sure it is properly sized. Then they should be good to go. They should be worrying about the details, the sizing, and design of the solution to fit their needs. Other than that, so long as that process goes well, it should be pretty seamless after that.

This product is a really decent product so it would be unfair for me to rate it because I'm not familiar with other products that compete with it. Generally speaking from my experience, this solution is very good, but it also has some room for improvement. On the other hand, it's tough because the product is really amazing. It's just really new. I'm pretty sure the improvements will come along the way. I'll give it a nine out of ten.