Techmonkeys Community Blog

18 Reasons to use Office 365 – #7 Upfront costs of a server ?

TechMonkeys recently quoted a business with 20 users for an upgrade from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. We compared the overall costs for 1 year.

In order to upgrade our customer they would need:

• A new Rack Mounted HP Server with 1 TB fault tolerant storage
• Windows Server 2008 License
• Exchange 2010 (plus 20 Exchange Licenses)
• Exchange Anti Virus
• Exchange Spam filtering
• Backup solution
• Testing and documentation
• Migration and user training

We priced the above upgrade out for our customer, and of course we would gladly install a new system for them. The upfront cost for a server and accompanyingsoftware was approximately £7000 (excluding testing, documentation, migration fees, server AV, anti spam and backups).

With this in mind, TechMonkeys requested permission to quote the customer for a migration to Office 365 plan as an alternative solution.

Upfront software / hardware cost £0

25 users on office 365 Plan 1 £4 / User / Month

Total cost per year; £1200

The above comes with more than just email. Just take a look at these additional features included in the above cost:

• Email, calendar, contacts, personal archive, and 25 GB mailbox storage with 25 MB attachments with Exchange Online
• Online document viewing and basic editing capabilities for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote with Office Web Apps
• Easily access and view files from your mobile device with Office Web Apps
• Consistent file formatting from desktop Office versions to web versions with Office Web Apps
• Sites to share documents and information with SharePoint Online
• Instant messaging, presence, online meetings, and PC-to-PC audio/video calls with Lync Online
• Share your desktop with colleagues and partners with Lync Online
• Premium antivirus and anti-spam filtering with Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange

All of this with an uptime of ..

TechMonkeys provide on-site setup and migration for either solution at a small additional cost. So which would you choose ?

On Site Exchange.  Cost Approx £7000 excluding setup and migration.

Office 365. Cost £1200 / year excluding setup and migration.

TechMonkeys offer a free trial on all Office 365 plans. Contact us on 0845 621 6660 or info@techmonkeys.co.uk