Our manager of data center technologies, Chris Fallin, has done a great job of designing an upgrade to our Exchange-based email platform. The design is enterprise-class (highly redundant and highly recoverable). But it also manages cost by reducing some of the unnecessary redundancy we have today. We will be implementing tools to manage email retention and e-discovery. We will also are buying tools to monitor the platform and manage the migration from Exchange 5.5 to 2007.
In total it will cost us $1.5M to upgrade our email platform. This includes a mix of Servers, OS, System software, Network upgrades and Microsoft Client Access Licenses.
Additionally, our cost to maintain that system (software and hardware maintenance and network connections) will run about $760K over the next 4 years. At that point we will need to upgrade hardware again (at least).
Given that we have 15,000 email users, I calculate our cost of email, for the next 4 years, will be $3.14 per user per month.
Candid CIO 
Your cost of e-mail is a great value when you compare it to the average monthly phone bill for an individual employee’s communications needs. Now, with VoIP you can leverage your $1.5M investment in e-mail upgrades to gain even more value for the dollars spent.
TPD, someday you will have to explain to me how I leverage my VOIP “investment.” So far it is more expensive and less reliable.
That cost seems reasonable.
I was going to ask what happened to Google email. Although, I think the last cost comparison makes it clear. Google email is $4.17 a month.
Unfortunately, you need the premier edition. I’m using the free edition with a small group of users and it’s amazing for the price. The collaboration with google docs makes it even better than exchange on that front.
Did you consider the amount of time wasted on email ? What about non-company use ?
What does it cost to run all that equipment – air conditioning, electric, printers, paper, toner for the printers, backup storage, UPS equipment, and don’t forget the cost of IT personnel. Upgrade, repair and/or replacement of personnel computers as well.
I think there are many other cost factors that need to be consider to come up with the final cost of email.
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