Friday, 21 December 2007

78 Percent of IT Managers Planning Upgrades to Exchange 2007

Despite a slower than anticipated start with Vista and Office 2007 upgrades, 78 percent of senior IT managers plan to upgrade from their current email system to Microsoft Exchange 2007, according to a survey by Intermedia, the worldwide leader in business email services.

Additionally, 61 percent of those who plan to upgrade intend to do so within the next 12 months – a relatively rapid adoption schedule. The survey results, based on responses from 200 senior IT managers, reveal a high demand for upgrades to Microsoft Exchange 2007.

Interestingly, only 5 percent of companies currently outsource Exchange, a number that is sure to rise, given the complexity and cost of deploying Exchange 2007. 48 percent of survey respondents have 500 or fewer employees in their company, a size at which in-house Microsoft Exchange may be cost-prohibitive compared to Exchange SaaS (software as a service).

"The survey shows that almost 25 percent of companies have no plans to upgrade at all, which is most likely due to the time and budgetary commitments that are required to get up and running," said Rurik Bradbury, Intermedia's Vice President of Strategy.
"This group, as well as those that are looking to quickly ramp up on the latest technology, should evaluate hosted Exchange solutions."

Hosted SaaS services help to alleviate the costs of upgrades for small and medium-sized businesses, which traditionally have fewer resources to buy, install and maintain an in-house Exchange environment. Upgrading to Exchange 2007 can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in license fees, hardware costs and dedicated IT staff to maintain the environment.

The survey also found that:

• 29 percent of those polled are without wireless email access

• Only three percent of those polled are still using POP email

• 69 percent of those polled use an internal document sharing tool