Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 Released, Adds Self-Service Restore

Veeam users can now securely recover their own lost data with the latest release of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365. The self-service recovery option is among numerous new features in Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6, released on Wednesday.

The v6 release also allows tiering to lower cost, cold cloud storage and archive services from AWS and Microsoft. Veeam also added the ability to enforce multifactor authentication (MFA) when restoring backups. Additionally, Veeam has exposed the software’s APIs, aimed at making the offering more scalable and enable integration with partner platforms.

Since launching the SaaS backup offering more than five years ago, it has become one of the company’s fastest growing solutions. The company reported 73% year-over-year subscription growth in 2021, Veeam CTO Danny Allan told Channel Futures. Including seats managed by Veeam cloud service providers (VCSPs), it now protects more than 10 million Microsoft 365 user accounts, Allan said.

Veeam’s Danny Allan

“We’ve had huge growth, and we’re only getting started,” Allan said.

Microsoft 365

Despite exceeding 10 million users, it’s a minute percentage of the 300 million M365 licenses Microsoft has reported, he added. Noting Microsoft’s projections that the figure will grow to 500 million by 2025, Allan said described it as a “greenfield opportunity.”

Moreover, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is now frequently the first product customers buy, according to Allan.

“It becomes the entry point into their organization,” he said. That is often the case for Iland Internet Solutions, a VCSP partner.

Many of Iland’s new backup customers come in looking to fill an Office 365 protection gap.

Iland’s Dante Orsini

“It’s definitely leading to a land-and-expand opportunity,” said Iland senior VP Dante Orsini. “But once people get their hands on this, and they see how simple and elegant it is, and how well it works, many of them end up evaluating what they’re doing for traditional backup.”

When Veeam launched Veeam Backup for Office 365 in 2016, many customers didn’t understand why they need it, Orsini said. “They just simply didn’t understand that the data was their responsibility,” he said. “In the first couple years, we had to educate people on what functionality Microsoft provides, and then how they’re exposed for all sorts of different reasons. Now, I feel like the market is well educated. But we still run into folks that simply don’t realize it.”

Self-Service Restores

One of the key new features in Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 is improved security and MFA support. The enhanced security also allows organizations and service providers to allow users to recover their own backups. Asked how he feels about allowing users to restore their own backups, Orsini welcomed that capability.

“We want to enable as much capability to the customer as we possibly can and let it let that be their decision,” Orsini said. “If they want to distribute that out to their end users, great, and if they want to continue to make sure it flows through their support processes, that’s fine too.”

Veeam’s Allan noted that because the new release supports role-based access controls (RBAC), an organization or service provider can delegate access to only those administrators who need to support the customer. For many organizations, letting customers restore their own backups can help reduce customers’ IT costs, Allan said. For service providers and channel partners, it will allow them to provide higher-value services, he added.

Tiering Backups to AWS and Azure

The new APIs allow service providers to tier customer backups in various AWS and Azure cloud storage services.

“If you’re doing a backup into Azure Blob storage, for example, you might want to store a copy into your cold tier of Azure Blob Storage for longer term retention, which is cheaper,” Allan said.

Besides Azure Blob storage, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 also supports Amazon S3 Glacier, S3 Glacier Deep Archive and Azure Archive.