SynApps The Open Source and Gadget blog

ZDNet's Phil Wainewright has a nice piece titled "How much does Exchange really cost?". There he rounds up the heated discussions that were created around reports of an 800 people company called Serena that switched from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. They say the comparable cost went down from $1 million per year for Exchange to $250,000 for Google Apps.

While Google Apps certainly is no replacement for Exchange - the real discussion goes around if Exchange really costs this much.

Is the $1,250 per user per year really overstated? I believe it is not. We at Open-Xchange are talking to many many Exchange users and switchers. $1,250 is at the very low end of the total yearly cost of an Exchange account. Especially for smaller companies with 10-50 employees the cost can go as high as $10.000 per user and year. But even for large enterprises a simple version update can become a very costly endevour.

I think the flaw in the comparison is comparing Fruitcakes (Exchange) with Apples (Google Apps), the latter being no match to what Exchange provides in terms of business class Messaging and Groupware functionality.

But the math doesn't change if you pick a comparable offering like, for example, 1&1's MailXchange - which would cost Serena about as much as Google Apps but would provide a real Messaging and Groupware solution for business users.