- Microsoft is responsible for the Dataverse platform, but any business data you put within it is yours to protect. Concerns such as human error, storage limitations, and compliance demands fall under your purview.
- Basic backups are often not enough to ensure true Dataverse resilience. Manual data recovery is a costly and time-consuming process that can significantly disrupt your business.
- Own Recover is a comprehensive backup and recovery solution designed specifically for Microsoft Dataverse. It offers granular control, flexible retention, proactive monitoring, and rapid restoration capabilities.
If there’s one thing companies using Microsoft Dataverse should know, it’s that relying solely on platform safeguards for data protection can be a risky strategy. While Microsoft is responsible for the security and availability of its cloud infrastructure, safeguarding your valuable business data within Dataverse ultimately falls on you. This shared responsibility model is often overlooked, leading to a false sense of security and, unfortunately, a mad dash when data loss rears its ugly head.
Shared responsibility—Microsoft owns the platform; you own your data
While the cloud offers incredible flexibility and scalability, it's crucial to understand how it works. As Kelly O'Connor, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Own, puts it, “There is a shared responsibility between the SaaS vendor and the customer. Microsoft protects their platform [but] the data, as well as the protection of that data, is actually the SaaS customer's responsibility.”
Microsoft diligently safeguards its cloud infrastructure, ensuring high availability, robust security, and regular backups. However, these backups are typically geared towards platform recovery, not granular data restoration. This means that safeguarding your valuable business data within Dataverse —customer records, sales opportunities, proprietary workflows—is ultimately your responsibility.
As Brad Orluk, Own’s Global Head of Alliances notes, many organizations mistakenly assume that somebody else is handling data protection, leading to a dangerous "false sense of security." He cautions that this responsibility is recognized in security circles but "needs to be very much recognized across an entire organization and across technical disciplines," urging them to "look [themselves] in the mirror and go, 'This is my problem to solve for.'
The shared responsibility model goes beyond ensuring business continuity when data is lost or corrupted. It also extends to ensuring compliance with regulations and governance policies as well.
Understanding and embracing this shared responsibility is the crucial first step towards building a truly resilient Dataverse environment.
Data disasters—Real-world risks within Dataverse
Data loss can happen to anyone. Whether it's a simple mistake, a technical glitch, or a malicious act, the consequences can be detrimental to your business. Here are just a few scenarios that highlight the very real risks to your Dataverse environment:
- Outgrowing the cloud: Companies have to scale rapidly, and they hit their storage max capacity, which causes them to go over budget and make some trade-offs. Rapid growth, especially within Dynamics CRM and Power Apps environments, can quickly push you towards storage limits. This can lead to performance issues, disrupted workflows, and require costly, unplanned upgrades.
- The human factor: Even the most seasoned IT professionals are susceptible to simple human error. "There's always the possibility of fat fingering or accidentally overriding important customer data that you can't get back," cautions Kelly. An accidental deletion, a misplaced keystroke—these seemingly minor errors can have major, irreversible consequences for your data.
- Compliance chaos: "If you're audited and found that your company is missing important data that you didn't know was lost—[that] is a huge issue that can result in fines and regulatory backlash," Kelly points out. Data loss can quickly escalate into a compliance nightmare, particularly for businesses operating in highly regulated industries. Failing to meet retention requirements or demonstrate robust data protection can lead to hefty fines and irreparable damage to your reputation.
Beyond backups—The true cost of data recovery
Many organizations assume that because Microsoft provides platform-level backups, their Dataverse environment is fully protected. However, this approach often overlooks the hidden costs and complexities of recovering data after an incident.
It’s not enough to simply have backups; you need to know exactly how long it takes to pinpoint the lost data, restore it to a usable state, and get your business back up and running.
“The most important thing is understanding what your quantifiable baselines are,” emphasizes Alan Garcia, Lead Evangelist at Own. “To contextualize that, what that means is understanding how much tenant storage you need to have available to perform a restore. Understanding how many times you'll need to restore in parallel to find the data that you're going to need. Understanding the steps and the repeatable processes that you take once an environment is restored to find data that has been lost or deleted or changed along the way and validate it.”
Traditional data recovery processes can be incredibly time-consuming and resource-intensive. This is where a purpose-built solution like Own Recover delivers immense value. By automating backups, streamlining recovery processes, and providing granular control over your data, Own Recover minimizes downtime and eliminates the need for manual intervention. This frees up your IT team to focus on strategic initiatives, not tedious data restoration tasks.
Building a Dataverse resilience strategy—A multi-faceted approach
Achieving true Dataverse resilience requires a proactive strategy that combines technological solutions with organizational alignment and a deep understanding of your unique data needs. Here are key steps to consider:
1. Engage the right stakeholders: Data resilience isn't solely an IT issue. "Figure out what the plan is to engage the right constituencies...That could be a vendor...team members inside of the organization," advises Brad. Involve stakeholders from IT, security, compliance, and business units to ensure a holistic approach that aligns with overall business objectives and risk tolerance.
2. Define your recovery time objectives: How much downtime can your business realistically tolerate in the event of a data loss incident? "How resilient do you want to be?" asks Alan. "Do you want to be resilient in six days, 10 days, four weeks, or do you want to be resilient...in minutes and hours?" Establishing clear Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) will guide your strategy and help determine the appropriate level of investment in data protection solutions.
3. Don't rely solely on custom solutions: "A lot of organizations have done...[is] just looked at...developers and said, 'fix this.' And that's just a luxury we don't have in the modern environment," says Brad. While custom scripts and in-house solutions might seem appealing initially, they can be difficult to maintain, scale, and often lack the comprehensive features of purpose-built solutions. Explore solutions like Own Recover that provide enterprise-grade data protection without the burden of constant development and maintenance.
Own Recover—Automated Dataverse protection, on your terms
Own Recover is purpose-built to empower Dataverse users with the tools and control they need to achieve true data resilience. Our automated backup and recovery solution goes beyond basic safeguards, providing peace of mind and minimizing the impact of data loss events. Here's how Recover delivers:
- Granular control: Don't settle for one-size-fits-all backus. Recover gives you granular control over what data is backed up, when backups occur, and how long they're retained. This flexibility ensures you can tailor your protection strategy to meet your organization's unique needs and compliance requirements.
- Flexible retention: Compliance is non-negotiable. Recover makes it easy to meet industry regulations and internal policies with flexible retention policies. Microsoft's standard 28-day retention limit does not bind you. Keep your data as long as you need it, with the assurance that you can quickly recover it when required.
- Proactive monitoring and alerts: Recover doesn't just react to data loss – it helps you prevent it. Our platform constantly monitors your Dataverse environment, detecting and alerting you to potential issues in real-time. This early warning system gives you precious time to address problems before they escalate into data loss incidents.
- Rapid, precise restoration: When data loss does occur, every minute of downtime counts. Recover enables rapid and precise data restoration, minimizing disruption to your business. Quickly recover specific data items or restore entire Dataverse environments with just a few clicks.
Don't wait for a data loss event to expose the vulnerabilities of an inadequate backup and recovery strategy. As Alan wisely advises, “Knowing what those [recovery] times are will allow you to react accordingly and be resilient accordingly." Own Recover gives you the tools and confidence to react swiftly, minimize downtime, and safeguard your organization's most valuable asset — your data.
With Own Recover, organizations can rest assured that they remain compliant and able to recover in the worst-case scenario.
This blog post is based on a webinar moderated by Own Senior Product Marketing Manager Kelly O'Connor and featuring Own Lead Evangelist Alan Garcia and Own Global Head of Alliances for Microsoft Brad Orluk. Download the datasheet to learn more about how Own helps build operational resilience in MSFT. Request a live demo with Own experts to see how you can safeguard critical MSFT data and ensure compliance.
