|
All these years that I have been writing about SharePoint, it has been hard to pin down the exact costs of SharePoint. One thing is for sure, that it is a whopping cardiac arrest evoking figure, as SharePoint cost calculators like the following from Bamboo Nation shall testify. However, it has been hard to ever set a specific figure, as you can with cloud based SharePoint alternatives - $10/user/month. The main reason for this is that there are simply so many parameters, especially if you are considering the real, total cost of hosting and managing your own SharePoint. These are the following: - Do you already have Windows Server, and Windows Server Client Licenses? If not, you would need to include that cost. - Do you already have SQL server? If not add that too. - Add the cost of SharePoint Server. - Will you be using standard client access licenses or enterprise client accesses licenses? - Will you be using it for internet facing sites? - Will you be using FAST enterprise search server? - How much IT staff time have you allocated to SharePoint management? How much are you paying your staff? - Do you also want to allocate some hardware costs to SharePoint?  As you can see, given all the variables, it is a tall order to estimate SharePoint costs. However, we have been saved this effort by Osterman Research, which recently did a survey on SharePoint, and came up with an "average" cost of on premise SharePoint for organizations per user per month - $30. Although this may not be the specific amount a company pays out, considering all the variables, it does give companies a ballpark figure to use in their cost comparisons. So compare Sharepoint with cloud based collaboration software alternatives to Sharepoint - $30 vs $10 user/month. What is your choice?Â
|
