Microsoft Office 365 backup included in Acronis Backup 12 update

Acronis has added cloud-to-cloud backup for Microsoft Office 365 in the latest version of Acronis Backup.

Acronis Backup 12 protects Microsoft Office 365 and 15 other platforms, all under one management console.

The vendor’s Microsoft Office 365 backup features include:

• Automatic backup of Microsoft Office 365 emails, contacts, calendars and tasks;
• Store backup data locally or in the cloud, for long-term access or archiving purposes;
• Preview, browse and search backup content;
• Recover individual and shared mailboxes to the original or an alternative location; and
• Recover and deliver individual items by email without restoring the entire backup.

Acronis’ existing portfolio can back up local systems with other Office 365 elements such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Acronis Backup 12 features Microsoft Office 365 backup. (Image courtesy of Acronis)

Microsoft Office 365 backup subscription licenses are available online and from local distributors. The monthly price per mailbox ranges between $1.67 and $3.33, depending on geography, volume and the subscription term, according to Acronis.

Most leading backup software vendors now support Office 365 backups as customers begin to realize that putting data in the cloud does not mean it’s protected. Microsoft Office 365 backup features have been available in the Acronis Backup Cloud product for service providers since July 2016. Office 365 is the first cloud application protected by Acronis backup.

With ransomware an increasingly prevalent threat, it’s critical to keep a backup copy in another location, said Frank Jablonski, Acronis vice president of product marketing. People in the industry anticipate ransomware becoming smart enough to hack into backups.

“We’ve hardened our agent that makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to get into backup data,” Jablonski said.

In the next product update, Acronis Active Protection against ransomware will protect user devices and data by blocking the attacks and instantly restoring affected data, according to the vendor.

In addition, backup for OneDrive and SharePoint will come later in the year.

The Acronis Backup 12 console allows administrators and service providers to manage data from physical systems, virtual machines (VMs) and cloud workloads in the Acronis cloud, on premises, and in Microsoft Azure and the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). The software can back up Azure VMs and EC2 instances.

The Acronis Backup 12 update also introduces support for VMware vSphere 6.5, VMware Changed Block Tracking, Acronis Instant Recovery, Acronis vmFlashBack and Replication with WAN optimization.