Azaleos Corp., the managed messaging and collaboration provider, has released the results of a study that finds that 44% of companies with 1,000 seats or more plan a move to Microsoft Exchange 2010 in the next 18 months. Here’s what Azaleos has to say about the stats.

The independent study, financed by Azaleos but conducted by Osterman Research, found that the most major drivers of Exchange 2010 migration are its large mailbox capabilities (50% of respondents), improved storage flexibility (50%), archiving and retention policies (48%), and disaster recovery features (40%), according to the press release.

More interesting than that, to my eyes, are the reasons the survey gives for non-adoption: while 57% of those respondents who don’t plan a move to Exchange 2010 say it’s because of budget concerns, that’s hardly a surprise given still-tight IT budgets. The really intriguing number is that 31% say they won’t go to Exchange 2010 because of the difficulty of switching from a non-Microsoft e-mail platform.

There are two ways to look at that last statistic: the first is that 31% of users are perfectly happy using another platform. The other perspective is that there are enterprises out there enticed enough by what Microsoft has cooked up with Exchange 2010 that they want in on it.

When I spoke to Azaleos VP of Marketing Scott Gode recently, he said that he was expecting Exchange 2010 to drive a lot of growth to the managed messaging sector, and it looks like the numbers are bearing him out.

Of course, the survey didn’t cover small business. During our recent travels, most MSPs we’ve met have said that they think Exchange will largely shift to a hosted or SaaS approach in small business.

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