Hosted Exchange - How Can Businesses Spread Initial Outlay?

Having your own e-mail system is a must for your business nowadays. However, there are a couple of different ways to approach this:
Running and maintaining your own e-mail systemHaving the e-mail system managed by a third-party (the ISP or on a cloud-based Hosted Exchange solution, for example)
In this article, I want to take a look at how beneficial it can be to opt for a Hosted Exchange solution, especially in terms of initial investment and expansion.

Initial costs for having your own Microsoft exchange e-mail system

Let’s suppose that you know exactly how a Microsoft Exchange licensing scheme works (which is another story), then let’s try to simplify things a bit and consider that you run a business with 10 users.

First, you need to invest upfront into the server’s hardware. Considering that you’re serious enough to provide a secure system, you want two physical redundant servers, each costing approximately £4000. Then, you need two Exchange server licenses costing approximately £400 each. Coupled with that, you need an antivirus and other software (backup, management etc) as well as tape backups that will easily cost £500. As with most systems, you need to budget for setup fees that I’ll evaluate at around £1000. Add to that a per-user or per-device license that can easily go roughly up to £200 for 10 users. Finally, add to that the maintenance fees. At the end of the day, your initial investment can go up to £10500. Simply said, you will have to invest up to £1000 per user.

Not only is it a huge upfront investment fee, but as your business grows, chances are that you’ll add users, or you’ll add other devices. This means, buying more licenses, and eventually investing in additional hardware if the current system can’t manage it anymore.
Finally, remember that those systems have some lifecycle, which means that you’ll probably have to renew it all after 3 or 4 years. To sum-up, having your in-house Exchange Service has a very high total cost of ownership.

The Hosted Exchange way

This is a totally different approach as the payment system is so simplified: you only pay for the number of users you have and that’s all. You can get a state-of-the-art professional e-mail service starting from £2.95/user/month. So in the case of your 10 users, you would only have to pay £29.50/month or £354/year – just compare that to the £10500 upfront investment you would have to budget if you were to choose a in-house Microsoft Exchange server. And, in case you are wondering, this is not a light version e-mail system: this is a fully working e-mail system with richer features that will adapt to your needs. Should your business increase, you don’t have to worry about additional investment: just simply request more users from £2.95/user/month and you’re set. Not having to worry about budgeting for a renewal of the e-mail system after 3 years of running time really puts the icing on the cake: the Hosted Exchange service provider is transparently managing it for you, without any additional costs.

By: Nick J Davies

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Hosted Exchange by Giacom is available to businesses in the UK, Europe and beyond. Based on Hosted Exchange 2010 technology, features include collaboration, shared calendars, contacts, shared tasks, push email, and more.