Many small and medium enterprises spend 1000’s of dollars a year on licensing of Microsoft server products. With the advent of large-scale hosted Microsoft applications it is now possible to spread the licensing costs out over many years, rather than buying them in one large lump sum. This allows companies to only license the software they use, rather than buying the whole package of software and only using small parts of it.

A 25 user organization would spend approximately 10000 dollars having an on-site exchange server implemented by a professional. This includes licensing, hardware, and consulting fees’. It does not include soft costs over 5 years, but a conservative estimate of 3 hours of support per month ($285) would bring the total cost to $27100. If the same organization was to utilize a hosted solution the total cost over 5 years would be $26250 (17.50 / mailbox / month) including any required on-site support, data backups, and guaranteed uptime. The hosted solution is almost a no brainer. There is no hardware on site to maintain, all upgrades are done off-site, and all the maintenance is done by people who know exactly what they are doing. Hosted Exchange with Intermedia, for example, is collocated (stored in multiple, geographically distant locations.) This provides data redundancy that would cost 1000’s of dollars to maintain internally.

Reliability of on-site hardware is always in question. Some companies are one break in away from losing all their internal data. Wouldn’t it be easier to keep all company data off-site in secured server farms managed by professionals? You’re on-site 4000 dollar dell server sitting on the floor is nowhere near as reliable as the 60 million dollar server farms that most hosted solutions companies maintain. Most hosting companies manage their data in such a way that it would take two major natural disasters happening simultaneously on both coasts of the United States to cause a service outage. That dell on the floor is one hard kick away from total failure.

As you can see, there is no good reason to keep your Microsoft applications hosted in house. Moving to the cloud will save your company money, downtime, and frustration. Not only are their substantial cost savings to be leveraged, but the unlimited scalability means that your company can grow without having to worry about the IT infrastructure being able to support it. If your company is interested in finding out what Microsoft Hosted Applications can do for you, call Joshua Harkema at 403.617.0197.

My report cards were average at best and always punctuated with remarks like “Michael is not living up to his potential”. When I saw this video it resonated. Maybe it will for you too.