Azaleos Survey: 33 Percent Companies Looking for New Unified Communications System

Azaleos Corporation, the managed messaging, collaboration and unified communications services company, released the findings of a survey of IT professionals on unified communications (UC) usage trends that was conducted at the recent VMworld 2011 Conference.

As per the findings, 31 percent of the organizations surveyed are currently evaluating and/or are in the process of switching to a new UC system, with cost reduction cited as the number one reason (27 percent) for the move. Additionally, 33 percent of the respondents reported that UC outsourcing represents up to 30 percent of their overall IT cost savings.

In a press release, Scott Gode, vice president of Product Management and Marketing for Azaleos, said, “According to this survey, enterprise technology buyers view unified communications as a key target for IT cost reduction initiatives, whether by deploying this technology for the first time or switching to a new platform.”

He continued, “Although conventional wisdom in the past suggested that IT struggled with justifying the cost of new UC purchases, it was interesting to see that for many respondents outsourcing of unified communications systems represents a significant share of their projected overall IT cost savings.”

Companies these days are rapidly adopting UC to improve collaboration, productivity and reduce IT management costs associated with maintaining separate infrastructures for each of these functions. This survey was designed to provide a snapshot of current and planned UC usage trends among corporations. Some of the survey's additional findings include top UC evaluation criteria, cloud over-rated, switching momentum, SharePoint surge, and leading functional requirements.

Azaleos Corporation was in the news when it announced the second generation of its Azaleos Managed Hybrid Service (MHS), which allows organizations to deploy and maintain centralized control over a blend of private cloud or on-premise and online Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) capabilities. Azaleos MHS provides monitoring, management, and reporting across both on-premise Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync systems and the Microsoft (News - Alert) Office 365 cloud service.

Sujata Garud is a TMCnet freelancer with three years of writing/editing experience and two years of market research experience. As an editor she has covered the IT, electronics, banking, pharma, construction, mining and healthcare industries. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell