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5.7 KiB
Markdown
114 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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slug: fonicom
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title: "How Corso helps Fonicom deliver a more reliable experience for internal backups"
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description: "Corso, an open-source tool for backing up Microsoft 365 Data, was lucky to have Kias Hanifa from Fonicom take a look at our tool. He was kind enough to write this guest post."
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authors: kias
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tags: [corso, microsoft 365, backups, MSP]
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date: 2023-3-06
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image: ./images/servers.png
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---
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<!-- vale Vale.Spelling = NO -->
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*Corso, an open-source tool for backing up Microsoft 365 Data, was lucky to have
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Kias Hanifa, CTO at Fonicom, extensively test it. He was kind enough to write
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this guest post*
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<!-- vale Vale.Spelling = YES -->
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I’d like to tell the story of how Corso is helping us build
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a more reliable experience for our clients. To start with, a word about my company:
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<!-- truncate -->
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[Fonicom](https://www.fonicom.com/about/#) is a multi-disciplinary ICT solutions company specializing in systems
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integration and software development. Our systems integration expertise covers
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networking, security, virtualisation, mobility, storage, Linux, Open-source
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technologies, public and private cloud solutions, business continuity,
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productivity, unified communications and collaboration, amongst others.
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## From open source to public cloud
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Originally, our main differentiator was our knowledge of open-source tools. We
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were open-source enthusiasts, and it had a strong business case as one of our
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key offerings. As we’ve grown, and as a SaaS/open-source hybrid approach has
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gotten more standard, we’ve now got AWS Partner, Dell Titanium Partner, Google,
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and Microsoft Partner status.
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There was a time when people mainly looked to managed service providers to give
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expertise in tools that had no other support. In the last several years though
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everyone acknowledges the need for public cloud expertise.
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As we got into cloud offerings, we found things like Microsoft Office 365 and
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AWS S3 to offer market-leading solutions to our customers. I further identified
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that Microsoft 365 backups were a key area where people wanted better tools.
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This led me to discover Corso.
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## The most important part of any open-source project
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When I first explored Corso I knew right away that they had the most important
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feature for any open-source project, or any software project: clear
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documentation.
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<!-- vale alex.Condescending = NO -->
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Corso is a tool for bridging two public clouds: creating backups of Microsoft
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Office 365 and sending them to object storage such as AWS S3. That means setup
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is relatively simple and involves connecting the two systems to each other.
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The documentation was straightforward to understand and follow
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and I got started almost right away.
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<!-- vale alex.Condescending = YES -->
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## What it means to be a Managed Service Provider
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We serve a lot of blue chip companies and Fortune 500 companies at Fonicom, and
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it’s reasonable to ask: what's the most central benefit they get from our
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managed services?
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Fundamentally, what Fonicom gives its clients is peace of mind. When a team
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elects to use a managed service provider they’re giving a strong signal that
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they don’t want to be running into the limits of our platform. They don’t want
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unexpected errors and they don’t want to discover that they’re experiencing an
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edge case leading to unexpected failure.
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While evaluating Corso I really tried to put the tool through its paces, since I
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knew my clients would have high expectations of any backup offering. You can
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test a hundred scenarios in your own process, but, as an MSP, if the client
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finds even a small glitch, they will quickly get in touch to complain. This is
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where we were impressed by how well the Corso team addressed our requirements
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and how well the Corso-based backups worked with the complex and large Microsoft
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365 setups found in our environments.
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## The second most important part of any open-source project
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Corso is a new project, and it’s not yet at v1. While testing it out, I
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ran into cases that the tool couldn’t handle. That was when I joined the Corso
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Discord and interacted directly with the team. I felt a lot more confident in
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using Corso, because wow, this team really knows what they’re doing!
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In the course of our testing, as our team tested Corso extensively for large
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backups, not only did the team work hard to understand the problem, but new
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releases in direct response to our bugs quickly resolved any issues we ran into.
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One example that stands out is an error caused by a user having two calendars
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with identical names. Naming two calendars the same isn’t supported in Office
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365 and can only happen as part of a merge or migration. This is the kind of
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edge case that could really affect my clients! When I discussed the problem with
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the Corso team, they were able to release a fix soon after.
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## Giving back to the open-source community
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It feels great to get to offer my feedback and my support to this free and
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open-source community. I’ve long been a supporter of open-source tools, and it’s
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so gratifying to see new solutions for longstanding problems
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---
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### A word from Corso
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We’re immensely grateful to Kias and all our early users for being generous with
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their time and attention as it has rapidly improved Corso's stability and robustness.
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It’s a great feeling, being the only free and
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open-source tool to back up Microsoft Office 365 data. If you’d like to give us
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a try please take a look a the
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[quickstart guide](https://corsobackup.io/docs/quickstart/), then join Kias and others
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on [the Corso discord](https://discord.gg/63DTTSnuhT) to tell us what you think!
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