01732 759725 magazine 31 DATA MANAGEMENT “In the context of Copilot, these solutions give people the right level of control of their data and the right permissions, so Joe Bloggs can’t search for everyone’s payslips, for example, or for medical histories. They can only see theirs (with the right permissions) and then Opus allows them to make sure they get back the most recent version and the most up to date information. Irrespective of Copilot, that’s really good practice, and it’s one of our fastest growing areas. Last year, it was a couple of per cent of our business. With the big drive for Copilot, it’s closer to 10-15% and if you think about that in the context of our 30-40% growth in the UK you can see we’re doing a big number in that space from a relatively modest start.” With its interest in Copilot and its focus on developing security solutions through acquisition and organically, AvePoint is a company to watch in 2025. As Shaw says: “It’s not just about the sales process, it’s about how well you serve the customer and the completeness of your vision and your ability to keep on being relevant.” in large part because they both help businesses get ready for Copilot by ensuring data is in a good state and share permissions are properly managed. “Policies and Insights, typically sold as a bundle, give IT managers the ability to see everyone’s permissions, everyone’s ability to share, internally and externally, and who has access to what files. They can very quickly create reports and dashboards that give visibility of an estate that they can then risk profile, add policies to and enforce company‑wide to make it very secure. That’s one part. “The other is Opus, which has its roots in archiving and gives people the ability to look at a body of data and say ‘That’s relevant; I need to keep hold of that’ or ‘That’s obsolete; I can delete that’. We run Opus as a scan over a certain dataset, we get the results back and then you can archive or delete to reduce your storage footprint. In addition, it can organise document versions so that the most recent version of information comes to the front,” explains Shaw. More than backup This is clearly more of a data management conversation, and one of AvePoint’s priorities this year is to make sure more people are aware of all it can do for Microsoft, Google, AWS and Salesforce users. “A lot of conversations will probably start with backup, because that’s what we are known for. It’s still a really valuable business, but it’s not all of what we do. We have back up governance tools, security tools, licence management tools, data lifecycle management. When you create a bit of data, how do you look after it, how do you back it up, how do you govern it, how do you move it? This year, there’s going to be a really big focus on security technology as well, as AvePoint evolves into a genuine backup, governance and security vendor, with everything available from one platform.” Shaw adds that AvePoint has a good record of integrating its acquisitions into its platform, citing tyGraph as an example. “This started off as a sentiments tool, an HR tool to measure how employees are getting to grips with things, to understand how people are using Microsoft technology: Are you generating an ROI? Are you using the right levels of plan? Are you on the right type of licensing? All those sorts of things that let an end user say ‘I’ve got the right type of licensing’ or ‘If we put this change into our environment, I need to track how it lands and then measure that with a dashboard and reporting’. “That was a really good acquisition. What I like about tyGraph is Microsoft themselves use it. It’s a really powerful tool and a really interesting proposition for the journey an end user will go on – getting the data in the right place, backing it up, securing it, discovering how people are using it and understanding the implications for ROI of having the right licence in the right place.” Copilot readiness Other technologies that Shaw highlights as having real benefits for end user customers are Policies and Insights and Opus, AI insights and governance AvePoint is helping organisations implement Copilot securely by adding benchmarking data for Microsoft 365 Copilot to the tyGraph and MyHub solutions within the AvePoint Confidence Platform for data security, governance and resilience. New capabilities include the addition of anonymised licensing and Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption data that will enable organisations to benchmark their AI adoption and usage patterns against industry peers; predictive analytics that will help organisations assign licences to individuals whose behaviours in Microsoft 365 predict high AI adoption; and user-level activity data, enabling organisations to improve change management by identifying AI champions and laggards. The AvePoint Confidence Platform ensures long-term AI success with strong data governance and security solutions, including the MyHub app for managing Microsoft 365 workspaces. New private preview features include risk assessments for data owners so they can manage permissions and address issues like sensitive file shares and oversharing links from their own Teams environments. John Hodges, Chief Product Officer at AvePoint, said: “Our data governance solution MyHub brings data security to the business owner and allows them to apply the right business context to their data. When the burden of data security and governance is solely put on an IT team, it’s not only inefficient, but it can also be inaccurate, which is why we believe our enhancements to MyHub are critical and go beyond what’s currently in the market.”
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