A year on from the Covid lockdowns, universities and schools around the world continue to operate in remote and hybrid formats. Education was already heading toward more online experiences before the pandemic, but cloud adoption has accelerated as a result of the widespread restrictions.

Metallic recently launched its Office 365 Backup offering in the education space, which provides backup-as-a-service for Microsoft 365 and Azure. Janet Giesen, VP of Operations and GTM Programs for Metallic, Commvault's SaaS portfolio, and David Devries, Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives at Commvault spoke with MSCloudNews about the new offering and emerging trends in Azure for education.

Metallic was incubated within Commvault as a startup in October 2019. Commvault has worked with Microsoft for 20 years including backup services around Xbox, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint. The current suite of Metallic backup offerings has focused on a range of verticals including government and financial services. Devries explained that prior to the pandemic, the Metallic team wasn't as focused on education. But budget reconsiderations on the fly during the height of lockdowns changed the outlook for universities, he says: