Microsoft 365 Data Protection Analysis

Analyzing the total cost of ownership for data protection solutions

Published April 2021

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Adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) has become ubiquitous across the industry. Companies and organizations are adopting solutions like Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365) to reduce administrative burden, simplify management, and gain access to rapidly evolving products and services. Microsoft 365 has gone from 60M monthly active users (MAU) in November 2016 to 230M MAU in September 2020, a 4x rise in four years.

While the adoption of SaaS has been a tremendous boon for the productivity of organizations, it is not a panacea. Similar to on-premises solutions, SaaS products like Exchange Online still require augmented functionality from third-party vendors to provide features like data protection and robust data loss prevention. In a similar vein, many features within Microsoft 365 are designed for general use cases and lack industry-specific features, causing many organizations to look for third-party solutions to meet their business and technical requirements holistically. For example, there are limitations in the eDiscovery solution offered by Microsoft 365 that may cause it not to meet the specific needs of an organization. When a customer encounters those limitations, they will need to find a third-party solution that enhances or replaces the eDiscovery functionality in Microsoft 365.

In this document, we will look at Microsoft 365 licensing and features and analyze potential feature or functionality gaps. Then we will look at how Druva’s inSync solution can augment or replace portions of Microsoft 365. Finally, we will perform a cost-benefit analysis of implementing inSync in tandem with Microsoft 365 to deliver the maximum value to a customer with a better Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).