Popular cloud backup IDrive has announced the addition of unlimited cloud-to-cloud backup for users of Microsoft 365 (opens in new tab) (formerly known as Office 365) and Google Workspace (opens in new tab). Privately-owned IDrive offers the service either as a standalone or an add-on for its business plans for $20 per year per seat. This is available directly from IDrive (no managed service provider involved) and there’s no discount for subscription duration or for number of users per account.
The Microsoft 365 backup service will include automated backups (up to thrice a day), retention, granular recovery and company-wide search and restore while Google Workspace data will backup data from Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts.
A spokesperson for IDrive told us that “Users also have full comprehensive control over their backups through a centralized web console, helping them to migrate, export, download, and perform cross-user restores with ease.”
Don’t backup at your own perils
Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft is not responsible for anything else other than hardware failure and natural disaster and short term protection against user and admin error (e.g. soft delete). Anything else (accidental deletion, malicious insider, departing employees, malware) is down to the user.
Microsoft recommends a third-party service provider in the service availability section of their general service agreement which reads “We recommend that you regularly backup Your Content and Data that you store on the Services or store using Third-Party Apps and Services”.
And as IDrive reminds us, Google’s integrated archiving feature, G-Vault only backs up Gmail and Google Drive content. The popularity of cloud-based office applications is driven by their adoption by small and medium businesses which in turn has attracted hackers, cybercriminals and ransomware peddlers.
A number of service providers currently offer online backup solutions, competing directly with IDrive or as managed backup and disaster recovery MSPs. Few provide with a clear, transparent pricing structure (Veeam, Backupify, Rubrik, AvePoint, Carbonite, ManageEngine). BDR Cloud and CloudAlly are more expensive with Nakivo being the only one that can compete with IDrive on price.
