Services · Tech

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup

Most businesses assume their cloud mail is backed up. It is not. Retention is not backup, and Microsoft say so themselves in their shared responsibility model.£5 to £8/user/month

Get a quote See all prices

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup, Optimum IT Solutions

What microsoft 365 and google workspace backup actually means

This is the backup for the data you already trust to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and almost nobody has it. There is a near-universal assumption that because your email and files live in the cloud, someone is backing them up. Microsoft and Google are keeping the service running, which is not the same thing, and they say so plainly in what they call the shared responsibility model: they look after the platform, your data is your problem.

The confusion is the word retention. A deleted email sits in a bin for thirty days, and people take that to mean it is backed up. It is not. Retention is a short grace period, not a safety net. Once it lapses, or once an entire account is deleted, or once ransomware encrypts everything and the encrypted versions sync happily into the cloud as the current copy, retention gives you nothing to go back to.

Proper backup takes independent copies of your mail, calendars, contacts, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, held separately from the live system, from which you can restore a single deleted folder, one mailbox, or everything, to a chosen point in time. It is cheap, it is per user, and it covers the exact gaps the platform's own retention leaves wide open.

See it work

Rather than take our word for it

Half of these backups would not actually save you. Decide which ones really would.

Sort each one

0/6 right

Backups copy to a USB drive that stays plugged into the same server, all day, every day.

Backups run every night and the software always reports success. Nobody has ever tried to restore one.

Everything saves straight into a shared cloud folder that syncs in real time.

Nightly backups go to off-site storage that cannot be altered or deleted for 30 days, and a test restore is run every month.

Three copies of the data, on two kinds of media, with one kept off-site and offline, plus a restore drill each quarter.

Your hosted email and cloud files are backed up to a separate, independent service with 90 days of history, test-restored every quarter.

A scripted demonstration. On your own kit we run a real check and, most importantly, a test restore to prove the backups actually work.

How it helps your business

The plain benefit is that a mistake stops being a disaster. Someone empties a folder they needed, a leaver's mailbox is deleted along with the correspondence you turn out to need six months later, a file is overwritten and nobody notices for weeks. With real backup each of those is a two-minute restore. Without it, several of them are simply gone.

The bigger benefit shows up on the worst day. Ransomware that reaches a synced cloud folder will encrypt your files and let the encryption sync up as the newest version, so the cloud faithfully replaces your good files with ruined ones. An independent backup is the copy the ransomware cannot touch, and it is very often the difference between restoring by tea time and paying a criminal or closing.

And it is quietly a compliance and continuity point too. Being able to show that your business data is genuinely recoverable, and to prove it by actually restoring, is increasingly something insurers and larger customers ask about. We test the restores with you rather than just switching the backup on, because a backup you have never restored is only a theory.

How microsoft 365 and google workspace backup helps your business, Optimum IT Solutions

What is included

Mail, calendars, contacts, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams
Point in time restore, so you can recover a single mailbox or one deleted folder
Protects against the two things retention policies do not: a deleted account and a ransomware encryption event
Restores tested with you, not just configured and forgotten

Real examples

Illustrative cases. Tap one to see what happened and what could have been done.

The leaver's mailbox nobody kept

The case

A consultancy offboarded a departing manager the tidy way, deleting the account to free the licence. Four months later a client dispute turned on an email chain that had lived only in that mailbox, now long past any retention and unrecoverable.

What could have been done

An independent backup would have made it a thirty-second restore, instead of reconstructing events from memory in front of a solicitor. It would have cost a few pounds a month; retention is not backup.

The ransomware that synced itself in

The case

A small architecture firm was hit by ransomware on one PC that encrypted a folder synced to OneDrive, and the encrypted files cheerfully replaced the good ones across the cloud. Microsoft's retention was no help, because the encrypted versions were now the current ones.

What could have been done

An independent backup, untouched by the ransomware, lets you roll the whole lot back to the morning before the attack, losing a few hours of work rather than years of drawings.

Ready to sort microsoft 365 and google workspace backup?

Tell us what is going wrong and we will come back with a fixed price in writing, after a short scoping call. No obligation, and no jargon.

Get a quote Talk to a person

Common questions about microsoft 365 and google workspace backup

How much does microsoft 365 and google workspace backup cost?

£5 to £8/user/month. We agree the exact number before any work starts, so there are no open ended day rates.

How long does microsoft 365 and google workspace backup take?

Most work of this kind is live within three to four weeks. We give you a date before we begin and tell you early if anything threatens it.

Do you work outside Edinburgh?

Yes. We are based in Edinburgh and work on site across the Lothians, Fife and Glasgow, and remotely across the United Kingdom.