Did you know Microsoft offers cost-effective storage for inactive SharePoint sites? If your organisation needs to keep inactive or aging data for long periods of time, there is now a solution that doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg! Save on SharePoint storage costs with Microsoft 365 Archive – keep reading as we explain more about this solution.
About Microsoft 365 Archive
You may have come across Microsoft 365 Archive already as it was released in public preview during the Microsoft Ignite conference in November 2023. The solution is now starting to get more airtime and we thought we’d explain more. Microsoft 365 Archive offers a cheaper option for storing content not actively in use but for content that could be required for future usage, archiving, regulatory or compliance matters.
If you use SharePoint, you will know that when storage on SharePoint Online reaches its limits, more storage needs to be purchased. There is an Office 365 Extra Storage offering for that, and more storage is bought on a gigabyte per month or annual commitment basis, the price is roughly $0.20 per GB (monthly commitment). This means that a one hundred gigabyte increase is $20.00/month, which is not a lot, but when you have terabytes of data that is not actively used, the costs start to mount up. With Microsoft 365 Archive, you can store your expanding SharePoint content at a lower cost and easily reactivate it with a few clicks. The cost of storage in the archive is $0.05 (UK equivalent) per GB per month with an additional charge for reactivating data of $0.60 (UK equivalent) per GB.
Why would you choose M365 Archive
While there are many alternatives for file storage out there, the biggest plus with Microsoft 365 Archive is that no other storage provider can store a SharePoint site with its structure, file versions and permissions intact like Microsoft can. Another provider would have to dismantle the SharePoint site and take all the data and all files separately meaning you’d lose the website that structures it all. As SharePoint is part of the Microsoft infrastructure you would retain everything you need. There are also other benefits to using Microsoft 365 Archive as your preferred solution:
- Data will be searchable, meaning any authorised person will be able to find old files easily and will not be in cold storage/deep storage. We must include that there is a small charge for retrieval of this data.
- Pay for archive costs only if your total storage exceeds tenant’s storage quota
- Zero migration effort
- Easy admin searchability
- Up to 75% cost saving
- Assurance of Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance – Use Microsoft 365 Archive + Microsoft Purview to maintain the same security and compliance including retention policies, eDiscovery, sensitivity labels and DLP (data loss prevention)
- Free 7-day restorability
Save on SharePoint storage costs
Too often we see our clients struggling with effective storage solutions, Microsoft 365 Archive is a tool we think is a great addition to any administrator’s toolbox. You may be a hoarder regarding files and data, and quite rightly so, as you never know when you might need access to a file again.
Microsoft 365 Archive gives you peace of mind and is also a way to reduce costs since purchasing more active storage capacity is more costly and is not automatically increased when storage limits are reached. The pay-as-you-go model is billed based on the usage. Microsoft 365 Archive doesn’t remove the need of having a process to manage the lifecycle of then content, it’s just a new step, if archiving hasn’t been used before. It’s also a good idea to monitor archiving costs from time to time.
It’s also important to remember that when a site has been archived for more than seven days, the reactivation is billed based on the whole storage reserved for the site. For example, reactivating a 750GB site will cost around $450 ($0.60/GB x 750GB). This is also something to be considered in the lifecycle process.
If you’d like to save on your SharePoint storage costs, contact our team who can help.
