Azaleos Launches New Managed SharePoint Services
4/15/2009
SEATTLE, April 15, 2009 -- Azaleos® Corporation, the managed unified communications services company, today announced Azaleos SharePoint Services, a new addition to its remote monitoring and management offerings. Azaleos SharePoint Services, which provide 24X7 management of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and its associated infrastructure deployed on the customer premise, enables organizations to address the high cost and shortage of qualified SharePoint administrators.
A new report published today by Osterman Research found that labor costs, lack of training, and a shortage of qualified personnel were leading impediments among organizations that have deployed MOSS. In the report entitled “The Growing Importance of Microsoft SharePoint”, Osterman Research found that:
- Labor is a huge cost of managing SharePoint, on average $45 per user per month
- Most IT staff devoted to SharePoint management do not have significant levels of formal training, fewer than 10 percent started with full SharePoint training and/or certificates
- 25 percent of organizations surveyed view difficulty in finding qualified IT personnel to manage SharePoint to be a serious inhibitor to efficiently leveraging SharePoint technology
The full report is available at: www.azaleos.com/osterman.
Zero Maintenance MOSS
To maintain 24X7 availability and peak performance for MOSS deployments, Azaleos SharePoint Services uses patented technology to remotely and continuously monitor more than 2,000 data points from SharePoint Server, Internet Information Server (IIS), and SQL Server, as well as related storage and network infrastructure. Experts at Azaleos network operations centers in Seattle and Charlotte monitor customer sites around the clock to identify and address problems as they occur and before customers become aware of them.
In addition to proactive monitoring and the remediation of conditions that can lead to downtime, Azaleos SharePoint Services provide complete maintenance for MOSS infrastructures so that internal IT personnel can focus on core line-of-business IT initiatives. The Azaleos MOSS management service includes:
- System architecting, deployment and configuration of MOSS
- Testing and installation for new Microsoft service packs, hot fixes, and patches for MOSS, including the creation of a new MOSS image
- Backup of MOSS using Microsoft Data Protection Manager per customer service level agreements
- Monitoring and assured availability of websites through the use of a synthetic client which proactively checks URLs and validates .NET applications and other web-based systems
- Complete health maintenance and hygiene for the MOSS data store and storage hardware
“The new Osterman Research report released today estimates that roughly two-thirds of Exchange-enabled users will have access to some flavor of SharePoint by the end of 2009, but most organizations still lack the in-house expertise or resources to properly manage it. To make matters worse, trained SharePoint administrators are either very expensive or hard to find,” said Scott Gode, vice president of product management for Azaleos. “Azaleos SharePoint Services, which build upon our market leading managed Exchange services, enable organizations to deploy SharePoint today knowing that for a predictable monthly fee we will keep it running smoothly and securely.”
Virtualization Boosts Availability, Energy Savings
To maximize availability and lower costs, Azaleos has developed a virtualized architecture as its preferred deployment model for SharePoint Services. This green platform delivers significant advantages for MOSS including better uptime, decreased energy costs, and reduced hardware requirements.
Although Azaleos SharePoint services can be deployed on physical or VMware-based virtual machines, they are designed to work at peak efficiency on Windows 2008 Server with Hyper-V. Full Remote Management Suite of Services With the addition of its SharePoint Services, Azaleos now offers the most complete and reliable set of remotely managed services for Microsoft-based messaging and unified communications technologies, and Blackberry Enterprise Server. Customers can mix and match the following services to meet current and future requirements:
- Managed Exchange Services: Real-time monitoring, management and reporting for Exchange and its associated IT infrastructure
- Managed Mobility Services: Turnkey management and monitoring for the Blackberry Enterprise Server
- Managed Continuity Services: Email business continuity and disaster recovery
- Managed Active Directory Services: Remote monitoring and management of Active Directory
Availability
Azaleos SharePoint Services are available immediately from Azaleos and its business partners. The service launch follows a successful six month BETA program that included two Fortune 50 companies.
Pricing
Pricing starts at $15 per user/month. All Azaleos services can be purchased with All-In-One financing options that wrap hardware, Azaleos Managed Services, and any deployment and migration services into a single monthly subscription. Financing packages are available from ePlus, NetApp and Microsoft Financing. Customers who choose the Microsoft program are also eligible for a special “no payments for 6 months” offer available through June 30, 2009.
About Azaleos
Azaleos Corporation provides the benefits of hosted e-mail and collaboration services for organizations that can’t or won’t allow their data to reside outside the datacenter. Azaleos’ 24X7X365 remotely managed services for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory, Office Communications Server, and BlackBerry Enterprise Server keep information on-premise and under IT control, while uptime, maintenance, and support is handled by experts in its network operations centers.
More than 150 companies from Fortune 500 to mid-market enterprises rely on Azaleos and its patented ViewX technology to manage their collaboration infrastructures and address issues before users ever know they exist. Azaleos is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, and one of Microsoft’s top 35 partners in the US. For more information visit www.azaleos.com.
Download a PDF of this release.
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Editorial Contact:
Marc Gendron
Marc Gendron PR
781-237-0341
marc@mgpr.net
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