Microsoft to move out of the education market?

[matt40k]

Has anyone moved to the cloud yet how do they backup office 365 or GAE email and documents?

 

Eh? Its a managed service, surely one of the reasons you outsource it is so you dont have to worry about backups?

[localzuk]

Eh? Its a managed service, surely one of the reasons you outsource it is so you dont have to worry about backups?

 

You should worry about them more so if you put your data in the cloud! Suddenly, you don't have true control of your data, so you'd better think about the backup side of it - even if it is simply a case of ensuring the service you're using provides backups.

 

Just look at the recent debacle at 123 Reg...

[pcstru]

Eh? Its a managed service, surely one of the reasons you outsource it is so you dont have to worry about backups?

I don't see "recovery of file versions from 01/03/2016, prior to them being sabotaged by a member of staff" on any Azure offering - perhaps I'm missing it? We use a 3rd party product for GAE documents but it is not good value. It's one of the problems I have with 'cloud' - they might offer resilient infrastructure which minimises the loss of assets due to (say) the loss of a whole data centre, they do not seem to offer the multi generational backup schemes which keep us buying LTO tape and which helps me sleep comfortably at night.

[CyberNerd]

I don't see "recovery of file versions from 01/03/2016, prior to them being sabotaged by a member of staff" on any Azure offering - perhaps I'm missing it? We use a 3rd party product for GAE documents but it is not good value. It's one of the problems I have with 'cloud' - they might offer resilient infrastructure which minimises the loss of assets due to (say) the loss of a whole data centre, they do not seem to offer the multi generational backup schemes which keep us buying LTO tape and which helps me sleep comfortably at night.

 

In GAFE the snapshot file recovery goes back 4 weeks for full file deletion but for 'sabotaged' files you would use the 'restore previous version' which goes back indefinitely. Email is different as it can all be held in vault, indefinitely.

[Areku]

We had a managed service, managing all our data + MIS system.

Availability was "ok"

 

Until we had a series of power cuts / spikes that killed our on site servers, not problem.... or so we thought we will roll back to the managed service backups... which they assured us they where doing...

 

 

 

 

Turns out, they had stopped backing up several months prior (technical problem) no one at the managed service had noticed.... mail server had to be rebulit and manually porting as many mails over as possible..... MIS server........... the SQL was screwed. They had to contract one of those data recovery companies (at a cost of around 100k) to recover the SQL database off the wrecked SAN.

 

Whilst this totally sat with the provider to sort out, we where still with out a mail server for almost 2 weeks, and with out MIS(Sims) for a whole week.... there is still, to this day a 2 week period in our Sims database. where there is no attendance, assessment, or another data recorded.

 

TLDR.

Just because "backups is their problem" doesn't mean they care about YOUR DATA.

 

This is one of the many reasons, we moved back from hosted/cloud/managed services, back in house, then at least if it falls over, its our problem to sort and we have procedures in place that work. (and are tested!). I'm not anti cloud as such, we run all the services people tout as being the "benefits of cloud". Only we do it ourselves, I just don't trust a 3rd party to do it correctly anymore.

Edited May 10, 2016 by elsiegee40
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[mavhc]

I'd trust Google/Microsoft to have backups of backups of backups way more than

[Areku]

I cant name the company, due to a parting agreement, but i will say it was a larger one, the company was last valued in the region of £200m

[gshaw]

Has anyone moved to the cloud yet how do they backup office 365 or GAE email and documents?

 

One of the changes we accepted and changed our SLA around with O365 is that data is recoverable for a set period of time and after that it's "gone".

 

If you want to actively back up email then there's products like EMC Spanning http://uk.emc.com/data-protection/spanning-backup.htm that basically flips the hosting model on its head so MS run your live service and you keep backups in-house.

 

OneDrive \ cloud file storage could prove more interesting; generally we get very few calls about lost emails but plenty about lost files. Right now the majority of that data is in-house so we can retrieve from long backup windows. Right now that just won't happen with cloud storage so I think an area that may need further thought...

[mavhc]

First question to ask is: what do you mean by Backup? What are you trying to achieve? Archive, Duplication, Undo?

[nicholab]

Archive and undo

[matt40k]

I don't see "recovery of file versions from 01/03/2016, prior to them being sabotaged by a member of staff" on any Azure offering - perhaps I'm missing it?

 

Hang on, which bit of Azure are you talking about? Databases? So Azure db? That can backup to blob storage as often as you want, its only real limit is the size of your wallet. If we're talking about files, so onedrive, you have file versions. If we're talking emails, so Office 365, you can have recover deleted emails - again this depends on your policy.

 

Microsoft are pretty good with their alerts and seriously folks, Microsoft are pretty chatty these days - if you post on stackoverflow, don't be surprised if they appear. If there is something missing, tell them, they will listen and if its a good idea, don't be surprised when they actually do it!

 

I trust Microsoft more then onsite staff, don't get me wrong I've worked with some great techs and on a individual bases I'd total agree with the statement of yes, don't bother with azure, but I have had too many "I'm sorry but you've lost your data and you didn't have any working backups - and you didnt opt-in to our backup service, even after we phoned you and said are you sure you've got a working backup??" and realistically, good techs leave and they are not always replaced with good techs (also different heads/etc with different ideas can affect the story/money/resources). So yer, I trust Microsoft more, because they are transparent, but also because I know if they did loose my data, like genuine large scale data loss kinda thing, not single email someone deleted 4 years ago I could bring them up against the SLA (which is pretty lame), take them to court for damages, sell my story to newspapers, then move over to Google and become a Google case study - the damage to Microsoft would be far greater. Most large orgs scale Office365 up and down monthly, so if tomorrow morning the CIOs reads about Microsoft loosing data, you can sure as hell know next month they'll ported over a large chunk of users over to Google Apps - which would affect Microsoft revenue stream and Microsoft share price - Microsoft would be quick to shed of any team that was associated with this too. So neither at a individual level or a high level at Microsoft do they want to loose data. Its not like reg123 where you could just go f it and go work down the road doing pretty much the same thing, there arent that many companies like Microsoft and I doubt you'll get a job at one with that black mark over your head, so you're gonna have to take a pay cut for starters.

 

Anyway enough of my rambling

[Ephelyon]

I get the impression that those of us who attended the Microsoft event on Tuesday aren't really supposed to be discussing it publically yet. Nevertheless, what I can say is that the answer to the question that was the original purpose of this thread - "Is Microsoft looking to move out of the education market?" - is a resounding "no". If anything, they are very interested in a Microsoft-centric future for IT software and services in UK education.

[localzuk]

You know what'd be great? If Microsoft had someone who could come on here and answer questions, much like a lot of the smaller companies seem to be able to do now.

[nathan]

I get the impression that those of us who attended the Microsoft event on Tuesday aren't really supposed to be discussing it publically yet. Nevertheless, what I can say is that the answer to the question that was the original purpose of this thread - "Is Microsoft looking to move out of the education market?" - is a resounding "no". If anything, they are very interested in a Microsoft-centric future for IT software and services in UK education.

 

does this mean they have some yet unannounced product/feature/license agreement?

 

not that you can discuss it in public... mind you a PM isn't in the public

[jmak]

does this mean they have some yet unannounced product/feature/license agreement?

 

not that you can discuss it in public... mind you a PM isn't in the public

Maybe we could set up a group PM[emoji14](I know that's not a thing)

[matt40k]

You know what'd be great? If Microsoft had someone who could come on here and answer questions, much like a lot of the smaller companies seem to be able to do now.

 

Drop them an email and ask them then!

[caffrey]

"Is Microsoft looking to move out of the education market?" - is a resounding "no". If anything, they are very interested in a Microsoft-centric future for IT software and services in UK education.

 

Well that's a given, but at what cost?

[mavhc]

People selling stuff love the cloud, they can continuously bill you, there's no old version support, they can ask for per user fees, and there's less support costs (no need to make it work on the customer's computer, just their own)

[Ephelyon]

Well that's a given, but at what cost?

 

Higher.

[DJ-1701]

People selling stuff love the cloud, they can continuously bill you, there's no old version support, they can ask for per user fees, and there's less support costs (no need to make it work on the customer's computer, just their own)

 

And then if there is a problem... it must be your internet connection...

[CyberNerd]

People selling stuff love the cloud, they can continuously bill you, there's no old version support, they can ask for per user fees, and there's less support costs (no need to make it work on the customer's computer, just their own)

 

Agreed, but it's not that different than the continual upgrade cycle we currently enjoy: Need to upgrade the O/S for security, Need to upgrade PC's to run the O/S, need to upgrade the apps to run on the O/S.

 

The big advantage here is that most cloud apps are O/S and hardware neutral (HTML5) so you make savings on the PC and O/S upgrades.

[psydii]

People selling stuff love the cloud, they can continuously bill you, there's no old version support, they can ask for per user fees, and there's less support costs (no need to make it work on the customer's computer, just their own)

 

And customers often like it too.

 

In taking on the actual running of their own product for the customer, the vendor discovers how crappy it is, and has to rapidly improve it.

 

(See various MIS products, Library Management systems, Service Desks, and Sharepoint)

 

All-in we end up paying more but we get better tools.

[LeMarchand]

Higher.

 

Hells, yes!

 

[caffrey]

If Microsoft were that bothered about education they would've gave us an operating system that is easier to deploy and manage (totally vanilla nothing pre installed) instead of relying on hacks to get it all working

[CyberNerd]

If Microsoft were that bothered about education they would've gave us an operating system that is easier to deploy and manage (totally vanilla nothing pre installed) instead of relying on hacks to get it all working

 

Couldn't agree more, but they are the masters at copying others; the entire cloud strategy is only ever two steps behind Google so my money is that we will see a workable MS edge/Chromebook very soon.