Published July 2020
Sponsored by Backupify, Mimecast, Quest Software and Yubico
Executive Summary
Microsoft 365 delivers a range of long-offered and new style productivity and collaboration tools, ranging from cloud-enhanced versions of the original Word, PowerPoint and Excel suite, along with cloud-delivered editions of Exchange and SharePoint that negate the need for on-premises servers, the new Microsoft Teams application, and a plethora of less adopted services such as Microsoft Planner and Yammer. It’s a capable offering that’s been widely embraced by organizations across the world.
Equally, however, is the reality that Microsoft 365 comes with some shortcomings in the areas of security, archiving, backup, data protection, eDiscovery, and other key aspects of the offering. Relying solely on the native capabilities in Microsoft 365 can lead to challenges, such as missed security threats, duplicate efforts to perform eDiscovery across an organization’s data landscape, and the inability to recover accidentally deleted data. The use of third-party solutions in parallel with Microsoft 365 can address many of the platform’s shortcomings. Many third-party vendors build best-of-breed offerings rather than taking a broad-stroke approach to features.
