SolarWinds Backup for Office 365 delivers cloud-first data protection for Office 365 Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint

SolarWinds, provider of IT management software, launches SolarWinds Backup for Office 365, designed to extend data protection services by helping ensure the retention and recoverability of Office 365 data.

Backup for Office 365 backs up and helps restore Exchange, OneDrive and SharePoint data, managed from the same web-based dashboard used to protect servers, workstations, and critical business documents. The need for effective and affordable tools to help MSPs reduce the potential impact of malicious external attacks or internal user error is growing. 

Related data retention, recoverability, and the ability to demonstrate regulatory compliance is becoming even more critical, as more businesses continue to adopt SaaS applications and shift resources to the cloud.

With Backup for Office 365, users are able to save administrative time by managing Office 365 backups alongside server and workstation backups, keep recoverable copies of Exchange data for seven years, and archive OneDrive and SharePoint data for one year. Backup storage in SolarWinds’ private cloud is included, with more than 30 data centers worldwide to help meet data locality requirements.

Users can often unwittingly (or purposely) delete important emails, or OneDrive or SharePoint files. If this happens, SolarWinds Backup offers the ability to search for, and recover what is needed. If employees leave and the company does not want to continue paying a subscription fee to store their email and shared documents, then the SolarWinds Backup for Office 365 offers an additional way to retain and access this data. If the enterprise must comply under regulations with data-retention requirements, SolarWinds Backup is designed to help retain and archive critical data.

With SolarWinds Backup for Office 365, users can manage Office 365 Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint backups from a single web-based dashboard. They can also view and manage backup status across customers, and several devices and data types. SolarWinds Backup also helps strike the right balance between automation and control. Users can manually select which accounts and mailboxes they want to protect, or automatically add newly created Office 365 accounts to the backup schedule.

“Backup for Office 365 has assisted us in making our clients feel more secure and comfortable with cloud solutions because they’ve regained control over their data backups,” said Kelvin Tegelaar​, CTO, Lime Networks. “This solution is easy to manage, is super-efficient, and gives our customers an extra layer of protection and continuity.”

“If you’re relying on storage to do the job of backup, you’re putting your data at risk. Anything from an overzealous email cleanup to a deliberate ransomware attack can leave you scrambling if your data isn’t safely backed up. Microsoft is focused on the availability of active email and data, but potential gaps exist around the recoverability of accidentally deleted or overwritten data that are only solved by an effective backup product,” said Mav Turner, group vice president of products, SolarWinds MSP. “Backup for Office 365 is designed for peace of mind; you retain control over the retention and recoverability of your customers’ data in Office 365 and can be ready to help them in their time of need. Your backups will run seamlessly in the background, and the only difference you’ll notice will be increased trust that your data is safe, no matter what.”

SolarWinds Orion Suite v4.0 experiences Common Criteria Evaluation that includes Server Configuration Monitor, Log Analyzer

SolarWinds announced that the SolarWinds Orion Suite for Federal Government v4.0 is undergoing evaluation for Common Criteria to Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 2+ under the Netherlands Scheme for Certification in the Area of IT Security (NSCIB). 

The Common Criteria is an international set of guidelines and specifications designed to ensure information security products meet agreed-upon security standards for government deployments in 30 nations. Conformance is verified through laboratory evaluation and scheme certification.

SolarWinds SCM is designed to detect, track, and compare system and application changes. SolarWinds Log Analyzer allows IT professionals to collect, consolidate and manage logs. Both products are built on the SolarWinds Orion Platform, which provides a unified view and full visibility into the performance and availability of an IT environment.

“SolarWinds continues to invest in both the security of its IT products and new product development to better meet the needs of IT professionals in the public sector,” said Sandy Orlando, senior vice president of product, SolarWinds. “This year, two new products that are part of the Orion Suite, Server Configuration Monitor (SCM) and Log Analyzer, are undergoing Common Criteria evaluation for the first time.”

Teradici broadens support for Hyperconverged Infrastructure offerings with HPE SimpliVity

In an effort to provide a more streamlined and flexible option to reduce the complexity in delivering services from various data center and cloud combinations, Teradici expanded its support for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions. 

With this expansion, Cloud Access Software can better offer organizations a single interface for remote desktops that can be deployed across the combination of widely used on-premises, private, or public clouds that works best for them.

With Cloud Access, users get the software, tools, and support to migrate legacy applications, as-is, to the cloud or datacenter of their choice; deploy, manage, and access virtualized workspaces from any combination of private or public data centers; and, manage and optimize existing PCoIP endpoints & hardware (including PCoIP Remote Workstation Cards). 

It also scales business effortlessly and improves administrative efficiency by automatically provisioning remote workstations, managing cloud compute costs and brokering PCoIP connections to remote Windows or Linux workstations, from a single console.

Hybrid and multi-cloud architectures are now a reality for many enterprises, offering a practical solution to provide desktops for remote employees, improve data security, and prepare for disaster recovery.

Teradici Cloud Access Software and its included Cloud Access Manager simplifies the configuration and deployment of remote desktops, regardless of physical location. 

Valued for its high security and reliable performance in even the most demanding use cases, Cloud Access Software can provide Windows or Linux desktop access from a wide variety of on-premises data centers and private clouds utilizing HPE SimpliVity, KVM, Nutanix AHV, or VMware ESXi; from public clouds (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure); or combinations of the above, all utilizing a single, simple interface that reduces the support required from enterprise IT teams.

HPE SimpliVity is designed to simplify the delivery of virtual machines at scale, enabling IT administrators to back up, clone, and restore virtual machines quickly, easily and cost effectively, without requiring specialized skills. 

The ability to use Cloud Access Software within an HPE SimpliVity solution provides an option that supports Teradici PCoIP technology, renowned for its efficiency, security, and visual fidelity in delivering virtual desktops and workstations to a variety of devices, including PCoIP Zero Clients, thin clients, and software-defined endpoints. 

For those who already have Teradici technology deployed in other data centers or as part of their public or private cloud deployments, this further simplifies the addition of the HPE SimpliVity platform to their technology stack.

“We see a wide diversity of cloud computing needs, based on each organization’s infrastructure and business requirements,” said Ziad Lammam, vice president of product management for Teradici. “Our aim is to reduce complexity and provide the flexibility to deploy virtual desktops across whatever hybrid or multicloud implementation works best for our customers. Ensuring that Cloud Access Software is easy to deploy across a wide range of HCI solutions is a key initiative to meet those customer needs.”

“Teradici has recently joined the HPE Technology Partner Program as a Silver Tier member, and Teradici Cloud Access Software has now been validated with HPE SimpliVity and ProLiant Servers,” said Carl Shanahan, WW Sr. Program Manager, HPE Technology Partner Program. “HPE is committed to innovating new solutions and enabling mutual growth together with our partners to solve our customers’ biggest business problems. Together we can offer our customers our latest validated technology to accelerate innovation and deliver business value.”

SolarWinds improves digital transformation with Microsoft Azure, helps tech pros better monitor, manage, secure hybrid IT infrastructures and applications

SolarWinds announced this week a wave of updates across its IT Operations Management offering, including the Orion Platform suite of products, and its application performance management (APM) suite. This extends SolarWinds support for organizations investing in Microsoft Azure as their digital transformation partner, and offers technology professionals the comprehensive ability to monitor, manage, and secure hybrid IT operations.

SolarWinds announced updates spanning both its SaaS-delivered APM suite, and the SolarWinds Orion Platform, which scales to encompass monitoring of on-premises and cloud environments, including Microsoft Azure, with support for monitoring Azure IaaS (Windows and Linux) and PaaS services, as well as Office 365.

SolarWinds now includes AppOptics and Pingdom (part of the SaaS-delivered APM suite). Included in AppOptics is the capability to monitor key Azure services and extended support to provide powerful application performance monitoring with tracing and code-level troubleshooting for applications running on an Azure App Service. 

Combined with the integration between AppOptics and Loggly, this extends its full-stack traces-to-logs support to provide comprehensive monitoring of Azure, applications running on Azure, and the logs created by those applications. Pingdom also extends support of Azure through the recently released Pingdom API 3.1, which makes it even easier to capture performance and availability data from Azure web applications.

The Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) adds new database performance analysis and recommendations for Azure SQL Database Managed Instances and adds support for the latest versions of various databases including SQL Server 2019, Oracle 19, MariaDB 10, and MySQL 8.

Its Server Configuration Monitor (SCM) provides an improved ability to monitor and alert on changes made within Windows systems running on Azure IaaS and adds support for detecting and tracking changes on Linux servers.

Orion Maps now includes editing capabilities to deliver improved context and relevant visualizations with background images, and more. The SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD) integrates with the Orion Platform for streamlined IT Service Management (ITSM) governance and workflow. This integration improves time-to-resolution by automatically creating IT incident tickets in SWSD when an Orion alert is triggered; and the cost calculator for Azure identifies total spend for cloud services across one or several Azure subscriptions as a free tool for tech pros.

To ease customers’ public cloud migrations, SolarWinds and Microsoft have partnered to certify the Orion Platform and its modules for Azure, and make them available within the Azure Marketplace. SolarWinds has added support for Azure SQL Database Managed Instance as the Orion database, helping customers reduce management overhead and total cost of ownership (TCO) associated with traditional database deployments.

“SolarWinds customers can now enjoy the benefits of cloud when choosing Azure for their network and systems management products,” said Wisam Hirzalla, director product marketing for Azure at Microsoft. “We’re delighted to have SolarWinds enable customers to run their IT operations solution in the Microsoft cloud."

With this support for running on Azure, SolarWinds empowers organizations with the deployment flexibility they need in today’s hybrid environments. Through the Azure Marketplace, customers can deploy the SolarWinds systems and network management software on Azure in typically as little as 30 minutes, and existing customers can migrate on-premises deployments of the Orion Platform and its modules to Azure-deployed instances.