(click to expand table of contents)

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1. Veeam Service Offerings
  • 1.2. Microsoft Service Offerings
  • 1.3. Microsoft Partner Agreements/Subscriptions
    • 1.3.1. Microsoft Pay-As-You-Go
    • 1.3.2. Microsoft Enterprise Agreement
    • 1.3.3. Microsoft Partner Shared Services Account
    • 1.3.4. Microsoft CSP

1. Introduction

Microsoft provides a wide array of powerful services within the Microsoft Office 365 solution, but a comprehensive backup of Microsoft Office 365 data is not one of them. Veeam strives to provide data protection for on premise environments, public cloud environments including SaaS applications, as well as hybrid environments. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 provides the comprehensive backup solution for Microsoft Office 365 data and can be delivered as a service to tenants.

As organizations continue to adopt public cloud, the need to leverage integrations and define best practices around public cloud continue to grow. Veeam’s integration with object storage such as Azure Blob has sparked more interest in leveraging Microsoft Azure. Cost analysis shows that Backup as a Service (BaaS) for Microsoft Office 365 can fully run in Microsoft Azure for a profitable revenue stream, being provided by Veeam Cloud Service Providers (VCSP).

1.1. Veeam Service Offerings

Service providers who are part of the Veeam Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program can leverage Veeam to provide Backup as a Service (Baas) for on-premises, hosted, or public cloud workloads. Backup Repository as a Service (BRaaS) via Veeam Cloud Connect Backup and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) via Veeam Cloud Connect Replication are also service offerings. Tenants can consume these services from their service provider of choice to send backups off site as well as replicate VMs for failover and failback, achieving minimized RTOs. Additionally, service providers can also protect Microsoft Office 365 data on behalf of their tenants. VCSPs can build their own Veeam-powered services offering, leveraging Veeam software built from the ground up for multi-tenancy and scalability, operating on a rental licensing model.

1.2. Microsoft Service Offerings

Microsoft Office 365 is a cloud-based service designed to provide the Microsoft Office productivity suite as a service. It is licensed as a subscription and market adoption is high.

Another key offering from Microsoft is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), offering compute and storage provided by Microsoft Azure on a subscription basis. This is ideal for service providers who want to augment their existing datacenters taking a hybrid approach or can be for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) that do not want to maintain datacenter infrastructure themselves. In short, Microsoft Azure can be leveraged to provide Veeam powered services.

1.3. Microsoft Partner Agreements/Subscriptions

Service providers who are considering the use of Azure to provide Veeam powered services may also be or be consider becoming a Microsoft Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs). Service providers who work with both privately owned datacenters and public cloud, taking a hybrid approach, will become both a Veeam and Microsoft service provider partner. It is common for a service provider to be both a VCSP and a CSP.

It is important to understand the Microsoft partner agreements in which a service provider operates under to provide services. The following section provide an overview of subscription types to help avoid situations where a service provider may not be in compliance with Microsoft regulation. The following provides some detail around the different subscription options and whether or not shared services can be run from those subscriptions.

1.3.1. Microsoft Pay-As-You-Go

Azure services can be procured with pay-as-you-go pricing. Pay only for what is consumed each month. There are no Microsoft margins/incentives or discounted pricing but has no upfront commitment and can be canceled anytime. Shared services such as Veeam Cloud Connect and Veeam Backup for Office 365 can be hosted from this subscription.

1.3.2. Microsoft Enterprise Agreement

An Enterprise Agreement is a commitment-based Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement for commercial organizations signing a new enrollment with 500 or more users/devices that want a manageable volume licensing program that gives them the flexibility to buy cloud services and software licenses under one agreement.

This provides discounted pricing on Azure consumption in which shared services such as Veeam Cloud Connect or Veeam Backup for Office 365 can be run.

1.3.3. Microsoft Partner Shared Services Account

Azure Partner Shared Services is a type of CSP program enabling partners to purchase Azure subscriptions for their own use. It provides a uniform method for purchasing, tracking, and managing Azure in addition to the ability to consolidate Azure licensing and reselling agreements with Microsoft. Partners have the same flexibility to use Azure subscriptions in CSP as they do in the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and Web Direct programs, opening up scenarios such as: build development and test environments, deploy internal workloads, and host shared services or multi-tenant applications such as Veeam Cloud Connect or Veeam Backup for Office 365. Microsoft Margins/incentives are not recognized but allow the hosting of shared services such as Veeam Cloud Connect or Veeam Backup for Office365.

1.3.4. Microsoft CSP

The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program is intended for a Service Provider to resell Azure Cloud to tenants and does not allow a Service Provider to be a tenant providing shared services. Effectively, service providers cannot create their own CSP Tenant and consume their “own” resources.

This means that a CSP Tenant account cannot be used to host a shared services solution such as Veeam services (or any other service).

However, in the case where object storage can be leveraged as part of the solution, it is possible to leverage a Microsoft Partner Shared Services subscription (or other qualified subscriptions) to host a centralized Veeam solution, but also drive backup data into a CSP Tenant’s Azure Blob. This can be achieved by driving data to containers/buckets associated under the CSP tenant accounts.