How much for Exchange for 500-800 users?

August 22, 2008 2:29 PM

MS Exchange railroad: How much does it really cost for an in-house Microsoft Exchange system?

The linux/imap/smtp email system at our company sucks (500-800 users) and one of our systems admins wants to deploy Microsoft Exchange (2003 probably) to solve this.

The problem is, the costs and complexity of the proposed Exchange system are spiraling out of control. It went from one physical server hosting Exchange to now 5 or 6 physical servers, each running various components, and talk of server CALs and client CALs. Exchange 2007 will be even more expensive apparently, if/when we upgrade to that.

We're now talking $100k of hardware, and $200-300k of cash thrown at Microsoft, just to get email for several hundred people. (the previous system running on linux was 'cheap', as-in no software license fees, and just a couple servers)

Looking at Microsoft's site, I can't make heads or tails of how this system -really- should be built out (server-wise), and what the actual license costs will be. Scanning the web, I can't find any 'I built Exchange this way for this many people and it cost this much' type of info.

Unfortunately the company brass has already tanked the idea of Google Apps or hosted Exchange, due to security concerns, so I'm actually just looking to find out how much $$ and how complex this Exchange system will be.

I know admin in question is a serious Microsoft zealot, and will just keep on piling on the hardware/software expenses, in order to build a small empire of systems under her control. Plus $500k for email seems pretty extravagant to me personally, and the proposed system is -incredibly- complex. If this admin leaves after setting this all up, we're screwed.

Anyone have any ideas on or pointers on this?

posted by jimjam to computers & internet (12 comments total)

There's no way you'd need that scale of a system for a few hundred accounts. I'd check around on some independent quotes to get an idea of what you should be looking for. I'm thinking your biggest problem to solve is disk space, but that could be remedied with a decent SAN.

Exchange's biggest advantage is the "office" part; tasks, appointments, etc that are shared among users. Unless this is something you really need, I'd look at revamping your current mail server system. What sucks about it? Chances are, you could build on that a little more to bring it up to what will work for you MUCH cheaper and maybe easier than dumping it and going to Exchange.
posted by chrisfromthelc at 2:38 PM on August 22, 2008

You shouldnt buy exchange just for email. Lost of things do email. Exchange's big benefit is calendaring, meetings, etc. Do you know the requirements of this project? Is it soley for email?
posted by damn dirty ape at 2:50 PM on August 22, 2008

Exchange (and all its features besides mail) is best if everyone's using Outlook at the desktop end - making it even more expensive.
If you've already got several sysadmins with the skills to build/maintain a linux mailserver at that scale, have them take a look at Zimbra. Zimbra Screenshot Gallery.
It has a lot of the features that Exchange can offer, but at less cost. If you just want mail and don't need support (due to having in-house expertise), then you might be able to get away with the open-source (=FREE) version.
posted by bartleby at 3:03 PM on August 22, 2008

2nding everything chrisfromthelc said.

I don't understand where people even get the "We must have an Exchange server!" idea from. As chris says, there's lots of stuff Exchange can do, but most of it's proprietary stuff connected to other Microsoft products, which I rarely see companies really using.

There are just tons of open source and commercial email solutions out there - this is basically the oldest and most mature application domain on the internet. It ought to cost a small fraction of the budget you're talking about to rig up and thoroughly test a variety of alternatives to your current system.

I personally like the Apache project's James server, which in addition to a solid and elegant overall design has sophisticated facilities for mail processing and re-sending. But unfortunately it doesn't do IMAP yet.
posted by XMLicious at 3:04 PM on August 22, 2008

duh, didn't check my own link: Zimbra Screenshot Gallery
posted by bartleby at 3:10 PM on August 22, 2008

damn dirty ape is right. If you just need basic email with no shared calendars, out of office assistant, etc... use vpop3.

http://www.pscs.co.uk/products/vpop3/
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:19 PM on August 22, 2008

MSFT's exhange comparison site has some TCO articles.

Other links show that a a single Microsoft Exchange server supports an average of 232 users. So you're looking at a max of 4-5 servers. I'm not sure where the 100k for hardware came from.
posted by wongcorgi at 4:23 PM on August 22, 2008

I think you're running about double what hardware costs, but yes it is that expensive. Setting up different "roles" on the separate machines is not a necessity but it is nice. Here's the catch: you need a different license for every machine, even if it is to make their own product stable. Throw in VMW Esx and you got real expensive.

But yeah try telling the boss why Zimbra doesn't work with whatever toy he just bought, or why person x at company y can't access your calendar's from the Internet because you got this product no one has heard of and you "only" saved $100k. IT is very backwards looking. They want cheap, cheap, cheap until they find it useful.

But you're looking at least 3 OS licenses (assuming you don't run the UC role), and an Exchange license for the hub transport, client access and the actual exchange mailbox role. Oh and it is a complete bitch to setup. You need a special SSL certificate that can do wildcard subdomains. Very Rube Goldberg in its setup. I would recommend you get it working like a tank before you move users because a lot of time the answer is "rebuild the server" when you don't apply something correctly.

On the other hand, no more database limits.
posted by geoff. at 4:27 PM on August 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

There's IT strategy and support companies that do these installations for a living. Give them a ring, tell them the number of users Exchange will be supporting, what features you want, and what hardware you currently have and they can spec out a whole hardware, software, and implementation bundle in a day or two. And it should cost nowhere near what your admin is budgeting.

I don't know where you are but if you're in San Francisco, send me a message and I'll give you the name and number of the outfit that rolled out ours. Even if you don't go with them, at least you'll have a reasonable ballpark.
posted by junesix at 4:53 PM on August 22, 2008

Seconding Zimbra.
posted by rbs at 5:18 PM on August 22, 2008

I'd go with Google's email offering with Postini. The non-negotiated rate would be about $40K/yr. It would be rock solid and a snap to admin. And most users love the Google web email experience.
posted by verevi at 11:43 PM on August 22, 2008

Hey, don't forget Lotus Notes/Domino. It gets the job done, and it sounds like a "Lotus Foundations Server" can take care of what you need in one fell swoop, while seriously infuriating your MS zealot coworker. :)

Seriously, though, it does carry an expense, although I'm pretty sure it'll be less expensive than an Exchange rollout - plus, it does more.
posted by Citrus at 8:34 AM on August 27, 2008