Osterman Research Survey Finds Mobile Device Management Costs Are Soaring

PRESS RELEASE

SEATTLE, July 11, 2012 -- Azaleos® Corporation, the global private cloud services company for managed Exchange, managed SharePoint and managed Lync, today announced the findings of an independent survey on mobile device management (MDM) conducted by Osterman Research. The research revealed that fulltime employee staff requirements to manage smartphones increased from a median of 2.9 per 1,000 mobile devices in 2011 to 3.6 today and is expected to reach 4.0 in 2013. The corresponding annual IT labor cost per user was $229 in 2011, $294 in 2012, and is projected to rise to $339 in 2013.

A copy of the report, entitled "Mobile Devices in the Enterprise: MDM Usage and Adoption Trends", is available at http://www.azaleos.com/resources/whitepapers.aspx.

"The increasing complexity associated with mobile device management in the workplace is being driven in large part by the growing number of personally owned devices or BYOD that are being used by employees alongside company supplied devices," said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, Inc.

"Organizations that do not address MDM properly face a growing set of risks, including an inability to adequately secure and retain data on mobile devices, greater downtime, higher IT costs, regulatory compliance violations and reduced employee productivity," he added.

"The survey showed the growing resource drain that mobile management is imposing on IT departments is driving many organizations to consider either a managed MDM service and/or cloud-based approach for their MDM solutions, or both," he concluded.

MDM Usage and Adoption Trends

Some of the survey's key findings include:

. Among organizations that have not yet deployed an MDM solution, 32% will deploy one in 2013 and additional 24% plan to deploy one in 2014

. The leading factor (34%) cited for deploying an MDM solution was the potential for loss of intellectual property

. Among respondents switching to a new MDM platform, 31% indicated that they would likely select a cloud-based solution. Of those, 55 percent said they would choose a private cloud solution for security reasons

. The top three reasons cited for choosing a cloud MDM solution were: - Simpler administration/maintenance (69%) - Predictable/reduced costs (39%) - Don't want to use internal IT staff resources (21%)

"One of the survey's key findings was that Microsoft Exchange's mobile device management capabilities fall short. In fact 36% of respondents that would switch to a new MDM platform or adopt one for the first time indicated that native Exchange policies are too few and insufficient to meet their requirements," said Scott Gode, vice president of product management and marketing for Azaleos. "With MDM requirements increasing because of the influx of personal devices, it's not surprising to see many organizations leaning towards managed services and/or private cloud solutions to address their needs."

About Azaleos 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, and Lync, 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 Azaleos 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 34 partners in the U.S. For more information, visit www.azaleos.com.