Slide's Microsoft 365 Backup Is in Partner Preview, With General Release Targeted for Early 2027
The timeline comes from CRN's interview with CEO Michael Fass and COO Carlson Choi. It has three stages. First, a group of MSP partners sees the preview at the summit this week. Second, the product goes through alpha and beta testing. Third, it becomes more widely available "early next year." CRN published on September 23, 2026, so that means early 2027. Slide has not named a date. No other outlet has reported the Microsoft 365 preview or the release window, so the schedule rests on CRN's reporting and the executives' own statements.
Slide has been heading this way for a while. Its public FAQ already includes the question "Are there or will there be plans to backup O365, SharePoint, Azure?" and answers it with "Yes, absolutely," adding that if something "has 'backup' in the name and MSPs care about it, we'll get to it." That FAQ gives no dates or specifications, and it doesn't say whether SharePoint or Azure will be part of the Microsoft 365 release. The CRN interview is the first report of a real product with a preview and a target window.
Fass said the push came from partners. He told CRN that almost every MSP he speaks with asks when Slide will ship a SaaS backup product, and he called the need universal across MSPs. That is one executive describing what customers tell him, not market research. Still, it is consistent with Slide's public messaging. When the company closed its funding round in March, Fass told ChannelPro that "MSPs back up and protect data that lives in lots of places," and "There are lots of different backup products that MSPs are going to come to Slide to help them with."
Why Slide Built Its BCDR Appliance First and Microsoft 365 Second
The order of work was deliberate. Fass told CRN that Slide started with BCDR because protecting on-premises servers is still one of the harder technical problems in backup. He said the architecture was designed from day one to take on more workloads, so the company would not have to add products later through acquisitions or bolted-on integrations. In his words to CRN, the architecture underneath the BCDR product "has other uses."
The founders' history helps explain the pitch. Slide was started by Fass and Austin McChord, who founded Datto. When they announced the company at the Right of Boom conference, McChord told the audience that, post-Datto, he and Fass both felt they had "unfinished business." The first product was a backup and disaster recovery appliance that is built on a cloud-first foundation, with all flash-based storage and native data encryption.
The company has grown quickly and has the money to add workloads. Slide announced a $70 million Series B funding round led by General Catalyst while outlining plans to expand its business continuity and disaster recovery platform and extend operations into the UK and broader EMEA region. In March, Fass told ChannelE2E that "Slide is closing in on 1,000 MSP partners and nearly 4,000 devices in the field." Six months later, Choi told CRN the company has "well over 1,000 MSP partners working actively with us." That fits the earlier figure, although both are company numbers and Slide hasn't said what counts as an active partner.
Choi described the protection surface that MSPs deal with every day: on-premises servers, workstations, laptops, Azure workloads, and cloud email on Microsoft 365 and Google's suite. Slide currently covers the first group with agent-based backup. The Microsoft 365 product is its first move into SaaS data.
What Slide's Current Windows Backup Stack Shows About the Microsoft 365 Workload
Slide's documentation describes the current product in detail. It is an MSP-only, block-level backup and disaster recovery service. Paired Windows or Linux computers back up to an on-site Slide Box, and the data is replicated to the Slide Cloud. MSPs can restore from either. On Windows, the FAQ lists support for Windows 10 and later, plus Windows Server 2016 and newer. Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, Windows 8 and 8.1 get differential backups only, and macOS is not supported.
The documented features show what "platform" means today:
- Backup verification checks that a backup can actually be restored.
- Encryption is always on, both in transit and at rest. The FAQ says Slide uses envelope encryption, where backup data is encrypted with a separate data key and the MSP's passphrase protects that key. Changing the passphrase re-encrypts only the key, not the whole backup set.
- Slide says backups are immutable because they are stored as ZFS snapshots. Deleting an agent removes local snapshots right away, but remote deletion is delayed for 30 days.
- Recovery options include individual file and folder restores, booting a backup as a virtual machine, disk-image exports, and bare-metal restore to physical hardware.
- The console is multi-tenant across an MSP's clients, supports single sign-on via OIDC, and has an API that the FAQ says can do "(almost) everything that the Console can do." Rewst has built an integration on top of it.
The key point for anyone evaluating the Microsoft 365 product is this: every item above describes the existing agent-and-appliance product. Neither Slide nor CRN has said the Microsoft 365 workload will use the Slide Box, the Slide Cloud, ZFS immutability, or the same restore tools. Microsoft 365 data doesn't sit on a disk that can be booted as a VM, so some of these features can't carry over directly. The claims Slide does make about the new workload are general. Fass pointed CRN to native end-to-end encryption as a differentiator, and said the platform makes it less manual to search protected data and confirm backups are usable. No one has explained how those features will apply to mailboxes or SharePoint sites.
The Single-Console Pitch Enters a Crowded Microsoft 365 Backup Market
Slide is entering a busy category. Microsoft sells its own Microsoft 365 Backup service, and many third-party vendors already offer MSP-oriented SaaS backup. MSP360 shows what MSPs now expect as standard coverage. Its product says it can back up Exchange Online, Contacts, Calendars OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Gmail, Contacts, Calendars, Drive, Shared Drives, and offers item-level restores of mailbox items, OneDrive files, contacts, calendars and SharePoint files. A vendor arriving in 2027 will be compared against that list, and Slide has not yet said which Microsoft 365 services it will protect.
So Slide isn't competing on having Microsoft 365 backup at all. It's competing on consolidation. Choi described the product MSPs don't want: "Don't give me another single sign-on and two different parts smashed together. It needs to be effectively a platform." CRN reports the goal is for MSPs to search, verify and manage SaaS backups using the workflows they already have for BCDR.
This is the point where a customer's view is useful. Devaughn Bittle, president of CommPutercations in Frederick, Maryland, told CRN he sees the value less in having a new line item to sell and more in how technicians work day to day: "The real advantage for us is going to be ease of managing all of this in a single platform instead of spread over multiple platforms like we have now." His comment describes what he expects from a product that hasn't shipped. He hasn't reported using or deploying it. His current setup, with SaaS backup in one tool and BCDR in another, is the problem Slide says it will fix.
Slide also isn't the only company trying to modernize MSP backup. Fass has argued that much of the market runs on old technology. He told ChannelPro that "Most of the existing products in the marketplace, especially in the MSP space, were built between 15 and 20 years ago." In a Business of Tech interview, he said that unlike many companies that aim to be all-encompassing platforms, Slide is dedicated solely to being the best backup provider in the market. Adding Microsoft 365 widens the product range without leaving backup, and it gives MSPs one fewer vendor to manage if the product delivers.
What MSPs Should Pin Down Before Slide's Microsoft 365 Backup Ships
For most MSPs, the practical choice is to keep their current Microsoft 365 backup in place and add Slide's product to the 2027 evaluation list. There is nothing to deploy today, and switching SaaS backup vendors usually means re-protecting tenants and working out what happens to retention history kept in the old tool. Partners at this week's summit, and anyone who gets into the beta, are best placed to get concrete answers.
Slide has not published several things that should decide whether the product is worth adopting. These include which Microsoft 365 services are covered (Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams), where backup copies are stored, how encryption keys are managed for SaaS data, how granular restores are, what retention and immutability guarantees apply, what Microsoft permissions the service needs in a client tenant, and pricing. Microsoft already provides redundancy for its own services, but restoring after accidental deletion or ransomware on the customer side is the job third-party tools are bought for. Restore depth and speed should come first on the evaluation list.
- Slide's Microsoft 365 backup is being previewed to invited partners this week and is in alpha and beta testing. Broader availability is planned for early 2027, with no exact date.
- The main selling point is managing Microsoft 365 backups in the same Slide console and workflows used for Windows and Linux BCDR, not a separately branded SaaS product.
- Slide's documented immutability, envelope encryption, verification and restore features belong to the current agent-based product and shouldn't be assumed for Microsoft 365 until Slide publishes details.
- Before committing, get written confirmation of the covered Microsoft 365 services, storage location, key ownership, retention terms and tenant permissions.
- MSPs already running Slide for BCDR have the most to gain from consolidation and should ask about beta access. MSPs happy with their current SaaS backup can wait for general availability.
- Slide's public API and Rewst integration make it worth asking whether Microsoft 365 backup jobs will be exposed through the same API when the product ships.
Slide is moving its Microsoft 365 product into a crowded market at a steady pace: a closed preview now, testing through the winter, and a release in early 2027. It has the funding and a partner base of about 1,000 MSPs to make the launch count. When Slide publishes the list of Microsoft 365 services covered and the restore options, MSPs will be able to judge whether the single-console pitch justifies moving tenants off the SaaS backup tools they use now.