Quest Software, a global systems management and security software provider, today announced the availability of Quest On Demand, a new, cloud-hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that makes it simple for IT administrators to manage and secure Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) workloads. The first release of Quest On Demand delivers solutions that make it easy for organizations to rapidly backup and recover Azure AD and Office 365 users, attributes, groups and group membership. Additionally, it allows for secure access to Microsoft Exchange Online and Skype for Business Online features through automated policy management.

On Demand, the first SaaS platform from the Quest Microsoft Platform Management (MPM) business, delivers automation at scale. With On Demand, customers no longer need to install and configure on-premises software nor manage the roll-out of updates. The On Demand platform is ready to use after a few clicks and integrates the core security features built into Azure to ensure data integrity and security. Now, IT organizations can innovate faster, lower costs, and take advantage of enhanced security.

"Quest is committed to helping customers leverage their Microsoft investments, and with more organizations managing workloads in the cloud, they need simple, reliable tools to help them efficiently secure, manage and recover those workloads," said Michael Tweddle, President and GM, Quest Microsoft Platform Management. "Quest On Demand helps organizations leverage - and benefit from - the variety of productivity platforms that comes with O365 in a simple-to-use SaaS offering."

Increasing Office 365 Productivity

According to Microsoft's most recent quarterly report, revenue growth for Office 365 commercial is up 45%, reinforcing a movement by organizations to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud. This explosive growth is driving an organizational shift in finding ways to not only better manage workloads in Office 365 environments, but also understanding how the business can take advantage of and benefit from all the productivity platforms Office 365 has to offer. With cloud adoption comes a new set of challenges for IT staff.

Quest is taking a new approach to address these cloud challenges with On Demand. The cloud-hosted platform offers interconnected SaaS-based modules that help organizations cost effectively manage and maintain control of what users can access and how they use cloud resources - whether they are internal or federated users - all through a simple-to-use interface. The first solutions available with Quest On Demand include:

• Quest On Demand Recovery for Azure AD helps organizations quickly and securely back up and recover users, attributes, groups and group membership in Azure AD and Office 365 environments with zero impact to the business. Difference reporting makes it easy to not only view granular changes between backups and live Azure AD but also allows users to select exactly what they want to restore, a capability not available with native tools.
• Quest On Demand Policy Management for Skype for Business Online and Exchange Online helps organizations set, enforce and restrict Exchange Online and Skype for Business Online policies from a central location. This provides an easy way to ensure that cloud resources comply with ever-changing business and regulatory policies. With Policy Management for Exchange Online, organizations can set policies for ActiveSync (mobile), mail retention, OWA, file sharing and address book - and, critically, increase control over mobile usage. With Policy Management for Skype for Business Online, organizations can easily regulate how end users conduct voice communications and share data with internal and external users.

"As companies move to the cloud, they often view management as something delivered by their cloud provider. But as their cloud deployments grow, they find a management gap compared to their on-premises experience. This gap poses one of the biggest unforeseen challenges for cloud deployments," said Edwin Yuen, Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Quest On Demand will help customers moving to Office 365 and Azure AD get the most from those offerings, closing the management gap, without having to be PowerShell wizards."

"As we migrate our existing customers to the cloud, we can use Quest On Demand to give them peace of mind without another piece of software or hardware needed to install," said Law Murphy, Account Executive, Cloud and Disaster Recovery Consultant at Abtech Technologies.

Commitment to SaaS Innovation

Quest On Demand represents a significant investment in SaaS for the newly independent Quest organization. With a continued commitment to helping businesses maximize value from their Microsoft environments, Quest On Demand makes it easy to manage Microsoft cloud workloads in a simple, scalable SaaS delivery model.

"As a business, we have a newfound commitment of delivering SaaS solutions to market fast that make it easy for businesses to optimize for the cloud," added Tweddle. "Quest On Demand is our SaaS innovation platform that is designed so we can rapidly deliver new technology releases to market that help organizations manage every aspect of their Office 365 productivity platform."

Quest will quickly expand upon the On Demand platform to deliver the solutions that enable full, multi-tenant lifecycle management of Azure AD and Office 365 environments, including migration, audit and license management. This is in addition to the recovery and policy management features now available in the first release.

Pricing and Availability

Quest On Demand is available now. For more information, including a trial download, go here.