Backup Unlicensed Microsoft 365 Accounts

Have Unlicensed Microsoft 365 accounts?

Are you maintaining inactive Microsoft 365 (Office 365) licenses to avoid losing data? Is the cost of maintaining licenses to adhere to data retention policies rising as your organization scales? Paying for inactive Office 365 licenses to prevent loss of data during employee onboarding/offboarding can eat into your budget, with no measurable ROI. Backup Unlicensed Microsoft 365 (Office 365) accounts with CloudAlly.

Explore ways to backup unlicensed Office 365 accounts to simplify employee management, save on license costs and meet compliance requirements. 

The High Price of Inactive Office 365 Accounts

An active Office 365 license is required for Office 365 data to be stored and accessible. This means that when an employee leaves the organization, the license gets revoked and access stopped. This can be challenging for the modern organization which has a chunk of licenses that are used on an ad-hoc or rotational basis; such as those belonging to vendors, part-time employees, and/or ex-employees. The data held within these accounts is not only valuable but also helpful to onboard the employee, vendor or contractor filling the position. 

The catch is this – Office 365 permanently deletes the data held by inactive licenses after 30 days. Preserving the business-critical data within the unused accounts means paying for the licenses. Audit requirements also typically mandate a minimum data retention period for non-active accounts. This makes it all the more essential to maintain the inactive licenses to meet compliance measures. All while incurring significant licensing expenses.

Litigation Hold is Not a Workaround

What about Microsoft’s Litigation hold? Using Litigation hold to export data and then perform a cross-user restore of emails and data is non-intuitive and complex. This is because litigation hold is not meant to be a recovery tool; particularly to restore emails and user accounts. While the data can be exported, recovery is a manual process, and there is no direct restore option. Litigation hold also does not maintain a separate copy of data in another physical location, making it susceptible to data and security breaches.  

This makes it an unviable and cumbersome option to depend on for onboarding/offboarding employee data transfer, meeting compliance requirements and quickly recovering emails, accounts, or documents.

Backup Unlicensed Microsoft 365 (Office 365) accounts with CloudAlly

SaaS Backup is an easy, cost-effective, and secure option to save on the expense of maintaining inactive Office 365 licenses while avoiding data loss. Back up inactive account data, relinquish the license and restore it to the new user/licensed account when required. More significantly, SaaS backup is the only sure way to protect your organization from Office 365 data loss due to human error, malicious intent, malware attacks, and sync errors.

CloudAlly pioneered Office 365 SaaS backup almost a decade ago, and consequently, our products are tested, proven, and top-rated. Newsweek recently ranked us as a leading backup solution provider. Our Office 365 Backup includes support to activate Office 365 account backups that have their status as “Unlicensed”. These can be new accounts or group accounts created by the Office 365 system itself. With the account data backed up, you can release the license knowing that the data can be securely restored to the new user’s account when required. Thus ensuring the smooth transfer of all relevant data from the employees, vendors or contractors who are exiting with the newly joined ones; while saving on licensing costs. Secure and cost-effective backup and recovery that’s geared for the enterprise.

Protect your valuable Office 365 data, skip the stress of complying with data retention, and save on the high costs of Office 365 licenses with CloudAlly.
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