Azaleos Wins Two Prestigious Industry Awards for Hybrid Managed Messaging Service

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Azaleos^® Corporation, the managed Microsoft messaging services company, today announced that it has been honored by two of the most respected publications in the technology industry – eWEEK and Windows IT Pro. Last week Azaleos OneStop services for Exchange Server received the eWEEK Excellence Award in the Collaboration Category, while the OneServer Virtual Edition appliance garnered the “Best of Tech•Ed 2008 IT Professional Award” in the messaging category from Windows IT Pro^® and SQL Server Magazine^®.

Azaleos OneStop Services are 24X7 monitoring, management, and maintenance services for Microsoft Exchange Servers deployed behind customer firewalls. OneServer Virtual Edition is a service endpoint appliance for the company’s remote management services.

Benefits of Hybrid Approach Win Accolades

According to eWEEK, “It makes a lot of sense for organizations to turn to hosted providers for key IT services such as e-mail. Unless you're in the business of maintaining an e-mail server infrastructure (and most firms are not), you should take a hard look at delegating those chores to a firm that does specialize in them. However, the remote nature of SAAS can present particular challenges, such as performance issues stemming from excessive latency on your Internet connection and regulatory challenges associated with storing your vital data outside of your firewall. Enter this year's Excellence Awards winner in the Collaboration category, Azaleos' OneStop Services, which offers a beneficial mixture of SAAS and on-premises virtues by enabling organizations to deploy Exchange e-mail in the form of a hardware appliance that lives on your premises, but that is remotely managed—and backed up—by Azaleos.

Virtualized Exchange Server

Best of Tech•Ed 2008 IT Professional Award winners were chosen based on innovation, competitive advantage, and value to customers. “In the Messaging category the winner is Azaleos OneServer Virtual Edition. Our judges liked the features of this innovative virtual appliance, ranging from its polished interface to its wealth of management and analysis options,” said Windows IT Pro Editors.

Azaleos OneServer Virtual Edition uses VMware Infrastructure to reduce the number of physical servers required to deploy Exchange 2007 from four to two. It also provides easy image replication for disaster recovery. This functionality reduces both hardware and power costs, allows faster deployment, and improves availability and reliability.

“Winning two of the industry’s most coveted enterprise IT awards in one week is a powerful validation of our hybrid approach to managed messaging services and the value we provide to customers,” said Keith McCall, CTO of Azaleos. “eWEEK and Windows IT Pro are two of the most respected data center and Windows technology publications in the world. This is a major accomplishment for us.”

About the eWEEK Excellence Awards

The eWEEK Excellence Awards program provides the benchmark by which enterprise IT professionals can assess a wide range of technology products and services. A panel of eWEEK editors judged the entries this year. They applied their industry and technology expertise to their evaluation of the hundreds of products and services entered into the program. The entries were evaluated based on:

• Innovation
• Practical integration of emerging technologies
• Suitability to task
• Cost effectiveness
• Potential for helping companies create business efficiencies
• Manageability
• Potential for helping companies develop competitive advantage
• Secureability

About the Best of Tech•Ed 2008 Awards

The Best of Tech•Ed 2008 Awards recognize companies who offer innovative products in the industry. The judges reviewed over 220 products and services submitted for the contest and chose 29 finalists to be interviewed at the Tech•Ed 2008 IT Professionals Conference in Orlando, Fla.

About Azaleos

Azaleos Corporation provides 24X7 remotely managed messaging services for enterprises with on-premise installations of Microsoft Exchange Server and Blackberry Enterprise Server. Azaleos OneServer and OneStop Services offer remote monitoring, management, maintenance, and reporting, which enable an organization’s IT staff to focus on strategic technology initiatives. Azaleos solutions can be installed and up and running in less than one day. A Microsoft Gold Certified partner, Azaleos was founded in 2004 and is led by senior executives from Microsoft, IBM, and Lotus. For more information visit us on the Web at www.azaleos.com.

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