Service Continuity for Identity and Provisioning Services

Applies to: Office 365 Dedicated Plans

Topic Last Modified: 2013-01-29

Identity and provisioning services for Office 365 dedicated plans and ITAR-support plans are hosted at enterprise-level Microsoft data centers designed to deliver highly available and highly resilient online services. Circumstances including hardware failures, natural disasters, and human error can impact service availability. To address this concern, service continuity management processes are employed to manage risks and to ensure that the Office 365 IT infrastructure is capable of providing continuing services if normal availability solutions fail.

For the identity and provisioning suite of services, service continuity resiliency measures are based upon the design of each service and the stated Recovery Time Objective (RTO) commitments for the principal Office 365 service (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, or Lync Online) being supported. For AD RMS, all multi-factor authentication services, and directory synchronization and service provisioning services, an RTO commitment does not apply.

To view service continuity information for a particular Office 365 service, refer to the Exchange Online Dedicated, SharePoint Online Dedicated, and Lync Online Dedicated service descriptions.