Let’s compare the costs of an in-house Exchange solution for a 10-person company with the costs of a hosted Exchange solution. We assume the company will keep the solution for five years before considering an upgrade. We also assume the company has 3 users who require mobile connectivity, 2 BlackBerry devices and 1 Windows Mobile.

	Upfront costs	In-house	Hosted
	X64 bit servers	R 75,000	Included
	MS Windows server license	R 30,000	Included
	Exchange server license	R 21,000	Included
	Windows server CAL's	R 34,000	Included
	Exchange server CAL's	R 60,000	Included
	Outlook / Entourage licenses	R 13,000	Included
	BlackBerry Enterprise Server	R 100,000	Included
	Setup fees	R 160,000	R 2,500
	Total	R 493,000	R 2,500
	Ongoing monthly costs	In-house	Hosted
	Antivirus	R 5,000	Included
	Administration	R 20,000	Included
	Monthly fee	-	R 1,500
	Total	R 25,000	R 1,500

This chart clearly demonstrates the upfront and ongoing cost advantages of a hosted Exchange solution, another economic point to consider is that most in-house software purchases are based on hopeful predictions of futurse needs.

In other words, a company spends more now to be able to accommodate growth down the road. On top of that there is the upgrade factor, which means having to buy, test and deploy new versions along the way.