Costs of Hosted
Exchange
Cost is the
major reason why hosted Exchange is rapidly growing in
popularity.
Upfront costs
are several thousand dollars for even the most basic setup,
putting in-house Exchange beyond the reach of smaller
businesses.
Ongoing costs
for in-house Exchange are also high. Either companies need
to hire IT staff or pay consultants to fix each problem,
adding thousands more dollars in annual costs.
| |
In-house
Exchange
|
Hosted
Exchange from Infotech
|
|
Servers |
All items
must be purchased.
Total cost
for a small
installation = Thousands of dollars |
All items
included as standard.
Total cost
for a small
installation = $11.95/month for each user |
|
Storage |
|
Backup |
|
Software
licenses |
|
Email
security (anti-virus, anti-spam) |
|
IT staff
time for deployment |
|
IT staff
time for maintenance |
|
Quality
physical environment and cooling, uninterruptible power |
Reliability of
Hosted Exchange
Having email and
collaboration that always works is now essential to doing
business - and downtime is unacceptable.
In-house
Exchange servers - usually in a basement or closet not
designed for sensitive IT equipment - cannot match the
reliability of hosted
Hosted Outlook/Exchange companies like Infotech manage
servers in large purpose-built datacenters with backup
power, air conditioning and Internet connections. Below are
the main threats to your email system:
| |
In-house
Exchange
|
Hosted
Exchange from Infotech |
|
Servers |
One server -
all email depends on this. |
Cluster of
servers - if one stops working, the others take over |
|
Data storage |
One or two
hard disk drives - all email depends on these |
Large
cluster of drives which automatically share workload if
one fails |
|
Backup |
Manual -
sometimes slips due to time pressures |
Automatic
and frequent |
|
Email
security (anti-virus, anti-spam) |
Updates not
always made frequently enough |
Continuous
24x7 updates |
|
Data
connection |
Single data
line to the Internet |
Multiple
connections, direct to Internet backbone |
|
Physical
environment |
Low-quality
environment, power, air conditioning systems |
Tier-4
datacenter (as used by Google and Yahoo!) |
Features of Hosted Exchange
Exchange is great because you can expand
it with add-on features. However, this
is difficult in practice with an
in-house system, as each feature needs
to be installed from scratch.
With hosted Exchange, all features are
already installed and ready to 'turn on'
if you wish to use them. Below are
features you may wish to add:
| |
In-house
Exchange
|
Hosted
Exchange from Infotech
|
Wireless email
Get your email and data on
devices like a BlackBerry or Treo |
Purchase
separate (expensive) servers and software licenses,
install them manually |
Add
instantly through online control panel |
Archiving
Create a backup of your emails
for compliance or security purposes |
Either a
time-intensive in-house effort or another external
service to manage |
Add
instantly |
Extra disk space
Expand storage with your
business |
Purchase and
install additional disk drives |
Add
instantly |
Advanced anti-spam
Sophisticated blocking
of spam to keep employees productive |
Additional
costs for software and maintenance |
Add
instantly |
Anti-virus
Reduce the risk of damage to
your files and IT infrastructure |
Additional
costs for software and maintenance |
Included as
standard |
Fax
via Email
Let employees receive faxes
anywhere they go, right in their email inbox |
Separate
service to manage or self-deploy |
Add
instantly |
|
