Last Updated on August 13, 2025 by Arnav Sharma
Microsoft introduced a new service dubbed Microsoft 365 Backup during this year’s Inspire conference. Microsoft 365 Backup is a Microsoft 365 add-on utility that enables administrators to centrally back up all of their organization’s Microsoft 365 data.
Microsoft 365 Backup offers backup and recovery services for tenancy data associated with “OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange” services. It enables organisations to search and filter backup content using metadata. Organisations can back up some or all files and can restore “files, sites, and mailbox items” in bulk or piecemeal fashion. When it becomes commercially available, Microsoft 365 Backup will include a “restore service level agreement (SLA).”
Microsoft 365 Archive can assist businesses with inactive data requiring “cold storage,” possibly for compliance reasons. Organisations gain access to search and discovery tools. They have the ability to establish data retention policies and “site lifecycle control capabilities.” In addition, they can establish data security and compliance measures, including “access policy, sensitivity label, and DLP (Data Loss Prevention)” Organisations are able to “archive or reactivate entire sites without having to migrate data outside of Microsoft.” Currently, Microsoft 365 Archive only supports archiving at the site level. Microsoft anticipates implementing file-level archiving “in the second half of 2024.”
Organisations utilising Microsoft 365 will continue to have the option of backing up their data using a third-party product, manually, with a script, or by not backing up their data at all. Microsoft 365 backup is merely an additional backup option. You are not required to utilise it.
One of the major issues that has long afflicted cloud backup is the fact that transferring data between clouds can take a considerable amount of time. If you decided to use a third-party backup application to back up your Microsoft 365 data to Amazon S3 storage, the backup procedure could be lengthy due to the data transfer between clouds. Microsoft 365 Backup, on the other hand, backs up data to the Azure datacenter, which is ostensibly where your Microsoft 365 data already resides. This means that data can be backed up and, more importantly, restored much faster than would otherwise be possible.
A second reason why it may be advantageous to use Microsoft 365 Backup is that it may reduce the cost of restoring data in addition to accelerating the recovery process. The majority of cloud service providers charge data egress fees for data transport out of the cloud. Data egress fees are essentially punitive fees designed to discourage consumers from transferring their data elsewhere. The issue with these fees is that data egress fees are typically levied when restoring data to a competing cloud. Consequently, if you back up your Microsoft 365 data to a competing cloud and then need to perform a large-scale restoration, you may incur significant costs. Since Microsoft 365 Backup stores backups in its own datacenter, you should be able to restore your data without incurring data egress fees.
Microsoft 365 Backup may be advantageous for a third reason: it is integrated into the Microsoft 365 administrative console and is simple to use. While these factors may not be all that significant for larger organisations, there are numerous small businesses that do not back up their Microsoft 365 data. Having a backup option directly accessible from the administrative console could encourage such organisations to begin keeping up their data.
Microsoft 365 Backup is significant for the fourth reason that you may be able to use it without having to abandon your current backup solution. Microsoft will enable third-party backup providers to utilise Microsoft 365 Backup on the infrastructure. This indicates that an organisation may ultimately be able to reap the benefits of Microsoft 365 Backup without having to switch backup providers.
A reliable third-party backup product may offer the option of backing up your data to the Microsoft 365 data centre, allowing you to take advantage of rapid restorations and avoid data egress fees. In addition, such a product will likely allow you to replicate your backup to a competing cloud, so that a copy of your data is stored securely outside of the Microsoft data centre.