Manage Predictable Costs With A Hosted Email Solution

In this article, I want to look at how predictable costs can be with a Hosted Exchange 2010 solution. However, before digging deeper into that, let’s first see the challenge an IT manager has to face when it comes to budgeting his in-house Exchange server.

First of all, let’s bear in mind that the following exercise would usually have to be done once every three years or so. This is mainly due to the fact that hardware is becoming obsolete (and are no longer under warranty) and new versions of Microsoft Exchange are released thereby moving your current Exchange version into the “unsupported” category. No serious IT manager would ever risk running into a system that is no longer supported and has fallen over warranty.

Now back to the budgeting exercise: the IT Manager would have to budget the following:

Server installation and maintenance fees: easily costs more than £5000Software licenses: is usually structured on a fixed acquisition price, plus a license per user. I am over-simplifying here, but it just gives you an ideaPower consumption for leaving the server online 24/7Consulting fees for setting everything up

In a previous article, we ended up with a figure of £10,500 of initial investment fee that would enable you to run an e-mail system that can handle 10 users. Although presenting high costs, those fees are still predictable. But our point here is to showcase the predictability.

So let’s consider that as a business owner, you’ve made that initial investment, and you started working with it. However, out of the blue, your IT Manager tells you that you need to hire an IT expert to solve an urgent issue since the server has stopped working - maybe because of viruses, updates that didn’t work well, faulty hardware or because of electrical issue – any number of reasons.
Now you’re in trouble: not only can you not delay addressing this issue (you need to communicate with the outside world on e-mail the soonest possible) but hiring that IT expert may not have been included into your budget. Or, your financial manager may tell you that he can handle this request only if he delays some payments for other services – this would mean that this unexpected issue will have some impact into the company’s organisation/processes. And the worst thing is that this kind of problem usually happens when you expect it the least – a typical Murphy’s Law.

Had you opted for a Hosted Exchange 2010 solution, things would radically be different. First, instead of budgeting £10,500 for the first year, you would only have to budget £2.95/user/month. That’s a figure your financial manager would love. But then, the issue I’ve raised about the unexpected server outage wouldn’t even happen anymore – simply because your IT manager would have no server to manage anymore and the Hosted Exchange service provider will guarantee at least a 99.9% up time in their service level agreement.

At the end of the day, when we are talking about predictable cost: all that matters to you is that day-in, day-out, you’ll only have to pay £2.95/user/month. No more surprise costs that you didn’t predict or necessarily budget for.

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.