Posts tagged Microsoft 365
Commvault Metallic - Hybrid Cloud Data Management and Protection as a Service

Recently I joined Commvault to discuss the challenges with data protection as organisations embrace the cloud.

You are able to watch the recent webinar where I spoke on this subject alongside Commvault’s Marc Lucas and Ronnie Kaftal here >> Commvault-Spotlight on Digital Transformation.

The doodle below summarises the areas for discussion in the webinar.

Most of us at the moment are seeing fast adoption of cloud based services such as SaaS like Microsoft 365 or IaaS with platforms like Azure, AWS, Google Cloud and more. Whilst these services help organisations accelerate innovation and remove the burden of many administrative functions, there is still the need to manage and protect the data.

In this situation it isn’t uncommon for many point fix solutions to be implemented. This fixes the problem in a specific area but equally leads to a fragmentation of points of management, policy and monitoring.

This is where Commvault comes in unifying data management and protection across on-premises and the cloud, across tradition applications and modern applications.

Metallic is Commvault’s data management as a service platform, it uses the same code base as the on-premises version but delivered a full cloud service and importantly you have a single point of management on-premises and in the cloud with their Control Center management plane.

Operators further get to choose where the data they wish to protect is stored with three different storage plane options.

  1. Full SaaS storage plane delivered as part of the service in a local Azure Region or with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

  2. Bring your own storage from private cloud, public cloud or on-premises options.

  3. Commvault’s HSX appliances .

During the webinar we saw how the Metallic platform allowed data to be managed across all infrastructure and application areas.

  • Demo One - Backup of a VM rom Nutanix being recovered to Azure

  • Demo Two - An Azure VM being backed-up to Metallic Cloud Storage and recovered to AWS

  • Demo Three - A SQL server database on-premises being recovered to a cloud based PaaS solution

  • Demo Four - Kubernetes and Database backup via Metallic.

Conclusion

It has been really good to work with Commvault to understand their offerings for hybrid-cloud management. Commvault aren’t a company that has gone and acquired companies to fix gaps in their portfolio, they have built the integrations from scratch and importantly unlike some others this results in a single management plane.

If you would like to learn more about Metallic you can check out the website below

SaaS Backup & Recovery Solutions for Data Protection & Compliance (metallic.io)

Disclaimer: Tech Doodles through Tech Crossing Limited has been paid by Commvault to create content covering the Metallic product set. Whilst Tech Crossing Limited and the authors of this blog post have been paid to create the content, there has been no influence or editorial control by Commvault.

Microsoft Ignite 2021 - Empower everyone for a new world of hybrid work

Today saw the start of Microsoft Ignite November 2021, this keynote focused on hybrid work with Microsoft 365. Jared Spataro Corporate VP of modern work spoke about the key elements and innovations regarding hybrid working.

Jared spoke about organisations requiring a digital fabric to successfully adopt hybrid ways of working, this is made up of communication, collaboration and creation.

Announced today was Microsoft Loop a new app acting as a collaborative canvas allowing you to bring multiple elements together for interactive collaboration.

Within Loop there are 3 core elements, Workspaces, Pages and Components. This is the evolution of fluid components and the elements can be copied from Loop into Teams, Outlook and more and importantly still remain live and interactive.

Read more about Loop here.

Next was ContextIQ, allowing users to get recommendations regarding content and resources directly in the editor to improve productivity and making it more simple to include the elements that matter where you need them.

Read more about Context IQ here.

Finally, I was pleased to see there will also be improvements to Teams webinars including virtual green room, structured Q&A as well as curated experiences allowing specific people and content to be shown within the webinar when required.

Read more about improvements to Teams Webinars here.

You can see my doodle summarising this session below.

Productivity and Well-Being with Microsoft 365

Megan Warren and I recently presented at Commsverse Online 2020, covering productivity and well-being in conjunction with Microsoft 365. The doodle above depicts some of the take-aways from the presentation.

Please find links below to a few resources mentioned

Microsoft MyAnalytics

Swipe Gestures in Outlook IOS

Forest

How to be a Productivity Ninja Book

The CORD productivity monitor

Teams integrated status lights