I work with a customer that generates $25 million dollars per year in revenue with an office staff of ten. For the last six years they have used Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 installed on a Dell PowerEdge 2650 server. Recently they have reached the maximum database size limit of 75GB for Exchange 2003 see Microsoft TechNet Database Size Limit Configuration and Managment . The existing server is also out of warranty and will need to be replaced. Initially the customer had requested an upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Small Business server, unfortunately Microsoft had discontinued the product see Trevor Pott’s Microsoft waves goodbye to Small Business Server article publised in June 2013. Moving to the next release of Microsoft Exchange would require a dedicated server, here is a quick overview of the costs involved with the acquisition:
- Dell PowerEdge R320 Server $1,939.00
- Microsoft Server 2012 $882.00 + 10 CALs $498.00 = $1,380.00
- Microsoft Exchange 2013 Standard Edition with 10 CALs $1,489.89
- Trend Micro InterScan Messaging Hosted Security (anti-spam/anti-virus) 10-user $249.99 per year.
- First year cost – $5,058.88
- Second year cost – $249.99
- Third year cost – $249.99
- Total Cost – $5,558.86
- Note: Total does not include installation and/or maintenance costs and assumes the use of existing backup software/equipment.
I was surprised at how expensive the overall solution was for such a small office. As the “trusted advisor” for my customer I felt obligated to investigate alternatives. The customer had two key requirements; 1. They wanted to continue using Microsoft Outlook client on the desktops. 2. The solution required support for sending/receiving messages on iPhone.
Microsoft 365 services offers hosted mailbox services for $5 per user, per month. That puts the annual cost for 10-users at $600, and the 3-year cost at $1,800. Moving to a hosted solution will save my customer $3,758.86 in capital costs over the three year period. After presenting the proposal to move the office to a Microsoft hosted messaging solution, my customer emphatically responded, “Sounds like a no-brainer to me! Let’s do it!”
It has been almost a year since I have helped this customer migrate their existing Exchange 2003 messaging infrastructure to the Office 365 Small Business solution and there have two unexpected benefits related to availability and cost. In the beginning of 2014 my customer experienced an extended power outage due to a Winter Storm. During that time the customer would not have had access to e-mail if it had been hosted in the office, hosting the customer’s messaging infrastructure at Microsoft allowed them to communicate throughout the outage using their iPhones. In 2013, prior to the migration, the customer spent $2,216.28 in maintenance upgrades (replacing failed hard drives, applying service packs, updates, and hotfixes, manual database defragmentation, and updates to anti-virus software). Since the migration the customer has not spent a single dollar on maintenance costs.
