Updates to Microsoft 365 backup licensing
There are more than 1.2 billion Microsoft Office users on this planet. For those of you who need some context, that’s more than four times the population of the United States (330,000,000+) but not quite the population of India (1.3 billion+). Also noteworthy, more than a million companies are leveraging Microsoft 365 (M365), which is about one in five corporate employees around the world.
That’s a lot of data.
Which leads us to ask, who’s protecting all that information? If your organization is one of the “one in five” using M365, we hope we’ve already made it clear that Microsoft is only protecting your data to a point. If you didn’t realize that your business is on the hook to back up Exchange, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint data, might I suggest you check out this recent presentation explaining the giant gap in 365 data protection.
If this is old news, we do have some good news for people already using Secure Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 – or those who are considering this solution. We recently updated our licensing to make it more straightforward. “If you need a Microsoft 365 license, and you back up the object, you need an iland license. It’s that simple,” according to Jim Klossner, iland Senior Product Manager.
You’ll still need a Microsoft license to use our 365 backup solution, but what does this mean?
- Public and shared mailboxes are now included for free.
- Resource, archive, and unlicensed Microsoft 365 users are now free.
- The authentication method used for a business/organization won’t impact licensing. Licensed objects will be calculated accurately.
“We’re trying to make it as simple as possible for customers and managed service providers who offer this service to their customers,” explains Klossner. “It also improves the user experience because it doesn’t matter what type of authentication you leverage.”
In the coming weeks, iland will include even more features that will improve authentication, even two-factor authentication. “This will help the user experience even more, with Microsoft moving away from basic authentication to modern authentication,” says Klossner.
Already using our 365 backup? You won’t need to enroll to take advantage of the updated pricing and licensing. This change is effective with April 2022 burst calculations, so if you’re already an iland customer, you can expect to see this reflected on your May bill.
Need more information about the license requirements? This article in iland Success Center explains what’s required.
