Azaleos Survey Finds 30 Percent of Enterprises Plan to Deploy New Microsoft Lync Server

Azaleos® Corporation, the managed messaging and collaboration services company, today released the findings of an independent survey conducted by Osterman Research on adoption plans for Microsoft® Lync™ 2010, the renamed and highly anticipated third release of Microsoft’s unified communications (UC) platform. The research found that 30 percent of respondents plan to deploy Lync Server 2010 within the first 12 months of its release, and cited cost savings as one of the main drivers. In addition, among enterprises that have currently deployed a non-Microsoft UC platform, a whopping 23 percent said they will consider moving to Lync Server (formerly known as Office Communications Server).

30% of respondents plan to deploy Lync Server within the first year 23% of organizations that have adopted a non-Microsoft unified communications solution will probably or definitely consider deploying Lync Server

“Unified communications on the Microsoft platform has grown from 16% of the user base at organizations surveyed in 2009 to 21% in 2010. Based on these new findings, Lync Server promises to accelerate this adoption rate even further,” said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, Inc. “An interesting finding from the research was that cost savings from Voice over IP was ranked as a top-three business driver for deploying unified communications, but only one-half of deployments actually implement voice services. That’s because many enterprises that would like to deploy VoIP simply do not do so because it’s too hard to manage.”

“According to this Osterman Report, Lync Server 2010 promises to make unified communications attractive and accessible to a much large number of companies than its predecessor Office Communications Server,” said Scott Gode, vice president of product management and marketing for Azaleos. “While Lync Server will reduce infrastructure investments and improve ease of use, migration and management challenges will remain including maintaining quality of service for voice services. The biggest obstacle facing enterprises is finding qualified staff capable of managing the Microsoft collaboration and communications stack.”

Azaleos Corporation provides managed email, collaboration and unified communications services available in private cloud, on-premise or mixed deployment architectures. Azaleos’ 24x7 managed services for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory, OCS/Lync, and BlackBerry Enterprise Server improve availability, security and performance, while reducing maintenance time and costs. The patented AzaleosX technology platform enables customers to maintain control over servers and data including their location, while uptime, maintenance, and support is proactively handled by certified experts in its network operations centers. Hundreds of companies from Fortune 500 to mid-market enterprises rely on Azaleos to manage their collaboration infrastructures and address issues before users ever know they exist. A member of the National Systems Integrator program (NSI), Azaleos is one of Microsoft’s top 35 partners in the U.S. For more information visit www.azaleos.com.