As organizations continue to scale Microsoft 365, protecting data has become a technical and operational requirement. Microsoft 365 Backup delivers fast, native recovery for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange—helping organizations respond quickly to accidental deletion, ransomware, and other disruptive events.
Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of departmental billing for Microsoft 365 Backup, a new admin capability designed to give organizations precise control over how backup protection is managed, administered, and billed across the business.
Granular control over Microsoft 365 Backup
As adoption grows, many customers have told us they need a better way to:
- Align backup costs to the teams that generate them
- Delegate backup management without giving up central control
- Support chargeback models across departments, regions, or business units
Departmental billing directly addresses these needs by introducing granular scoping, role-based access, and flexible pay-as-you-go billing—all within Microsoft 365 Backup.
Configure backup by department or scope
Admins can now define backup policies for specific scopes, such as individual departments, geographic regions, subsidiaries, or teams. This ensures the right data is protected—without forcing a one-size-fits-all approach across the entire tenant.
Select billing policies to use with Microsoft 365 BackupAssign role-based administration
Using Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), organizations can assign department-specific backup administrators. These admins can manage protection and recovery for their scoped areas, while central IT retains overall governance and visibility.
Manage charges across Azure subscriptions
Departmental billing enables pay-as-you-go billing across multiple Azure subscriptions, making it easier to map backup costs to the right cost centers.
Resilience where it’s needed most
Different parts of the organization have different risk profiles. Departmental billing allows teams to deliver backup protection that aligns to business criticality by allowing organization specific backup and cost management —without overprovisioning or unnecessary spend.
Real-world scenarios
Departmental billing unlocks a variety of use cases, including:
- Enterprises with multiple business units that prefer autonomous management of backup and costs
- Global organizations that need regional teams to manage their own protection policies
- IT leaders looking to scale Microsoft 365 Backup responsibly with financial transparency and budget controls for specific departments
Additional news for Microsoft 365 Backup
We’re continuing to invest in Microsoft 365 Backup to make protection and recovery simpler, faster, and more accessible. The newest addition to Microsoft 365 Backup’s feature lineup is its general availability for Government Cloud Customers (GCC). Other upcoming features include file-level restore and a streamlined billing experience, making robust data protection and recovery more accessible to public sector organizations.
See a full breakdown of what’s new and stay tuned as we look ahead to the public preview of file-level archive.
Resiliency in the era of AI
As enterprises accelerate AI adoption, one question continues to come up at the executive level: If something disrupts your organization's data, how quickly can you recover? Learn how Microsoft 365 can help provide resiliency for the content that powers your organization’s AI initiatives.
Get started
If you’re already using Microsoft 365 Backup, you can begin configuring scoped backups and billing models today. If you’re evaluating backup solutions, this capability makes it easier than ever to align resilience with real-world organizational structures.
To learn more:
- Explore Microsoft 365 Backup: https://aka.ms/M365Backup
- Learn how Microsoft approaches data resilience and governance across Microsoft 365. Learn how to set up Microsoft 365 Backup: https://aka.ms/M365Backup/Setup
- Watch our on-demand webinar to learn more about how Microsoft 365 Backup helps provide resiliency in the age of AI: https://aka.ms/M365Backup/Webinar/202603
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