Microsoft Teams continues to grow; as 2023 comes to a close, we can look back at the last year and see the impact it has had on the business world. With the impact and growth comes challenges regarding data handling, as well as managing the associated costs. Let’s take a look at why your organization should archive Microsoft Teams:
Microsoft Teams has largely taken over the role played by informal chat systems, as well as to a great extent replaced email for internal communications. As a consequence, the data stored on Teams is increasing in volume as well as in importance. Organizations therefore have to decide what comes next and how they intend to treat that data. The optimal result, as many are finding, is to archive Microsoft Teams.
The advantages to archiving Microsoft Teams can broadly be placed into one of two categories – data security and cost reduction. For organizations that use Teams heavily, both of these categories represent a significant consideration that should be taken into account when deciding how to deal with your data moving forward.
Backup and security
Microsoft works off of the so-called Shared Responsibility Model. What this means is that Microsoft divides data into several categories and determines which categories they are willing to take responsibility for, and which ones the customer has to guarantee. In practice, this means Microsoft does not guarantee your Teams data and you are expected to preserve it on your own.
As a consequence, Teams customers are faced with a choice – they can either capture their data on their own in a duplicated system, or acknowledge the risk that there is some possibility the data may be lost with no recourse. This risk may at one point have been acceptable – with heavier use of Teams, it is no longer so. Critical business data is found there, as are crucial communications you may need to review either for business continuity or legal reasons.
Offloading and sideloading data
Hand in hand with security comes the question of offloading or sideloading your data. Data stored directly through Microsoft Teams takes up the same storage as SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft charges steep overflow rates – meaning as data volume rises, there is an incentive to try and force it back down.
Compounding this issue, many organizations make a new Team for subprojects or subgroups that then rapidly become defunct. Upwards of 70% of these Teams are no longer needed or relevant, and take up data. However, deleting them or even archiving them within MS Teams makes accessing their data in the future difficult.
Rather than deleting data and exposing your organization to risk – either through accidental deletion of something that turns out to be critical down the line, or through being unable to fully comply with an eDiscovery case or other legal action – it is preferable to find a way to save on storage costs.
Archive solutions are the optimal approach to resolving this problem. When you archive Microsoft Teams, you can move it to a significantly cheaper storage system and sidestep the overflow storage fees built into SharePoint. At the same time, you ensure that the data remains freely and immediately accessible when needed.
Archive Teams with contentACCESS
Microsoft Teams and business chat applications are still a relative newcomer to the market. As such, they are not consistently covered by existing archiving solutions, and less-frequently updated software may struggle to match the pace of Microsoft’s major Teams updates. What’s more, the solutions that do cover Teams are even less likely to be compatible with existing archive and backup systems a company may already have in place. As a consequence, any business looking to capture and retain their Teams chats – and now Teams videos – is faced with the prospect of running a patchwork of concurrently operating software.
Archiving your business chat with contentACCESS Archive and Backup is a clear step to best secure your critical information. With a consistent track record of providing a top solution, contentACCESS makes it easy for users to find past conversations and individual messages on the fly – with access through either our officeGATE Outlook integration, the contentACCESS Web Portal or our contentACCESS Mobile App, users can quickly and efficiently access their recorded data no matter where and when.
Besides the productivity boost offered by contentACCESS’ world-beating full-text search and ease of access, contentACCESS is one of the few archive and backup solutions on the market that offers a single unitary system for all your critical data and communications. Access your email archive, SharePoint, file archive, or Microsoft Teams archive, all in a single system with a single point of access. This interconnectivity along with our ability to offer an on-premise, Cloud based or hybrid option gives contentACCESS an unmatched flexibility and allows your company to set up the system in a way that best represents your needs.
Does our offer interest you? Don’t delay – make sure your company information is captured and protected in a way that reflects its importance to your future. Our team of experts would be happy to schedule a cost-free consultation to discuss how our offer can best suit your business’ needs.
Take the best steps to protect your data – with TECH-ARROW.
Archive all your O365 data with contentACCESS
