Email Migration Costs

In this competitive market, major vendors of messaging products are working aggressively to convince organizations to migrate to their email platforms. Even those not contemplating a complete change of vendors must periodically consider major version upgrades with their associated costs and disruptions. This report presents a cost model for email migrations broken into a number of categories. Average cost ranges and typical figures are presented along with a spreadsheet to estimate costs specific to a given environment. The cost model and spreadsheet are also applied to three hypothetical case studies as examples.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary
Main Cost Elements
____Labor Costs
____Hardware Costs
____Software License Costs
____Travel and Expenses
____User Disruptions
__Assumptions and Terminology
____Cost of Internal Labor
____All Figures in $U.S.
____Medium vs. Large Organizations
____Migrations Same as Major Upgrades
Labor Costs
__Research
____Tasks Involved
____Discussion
____Examples
__Evaluation
____Tasks Involved
____Discussion
____Examples
__Design
____Tasks Involved
____Discussion
____Examples
__Testing
____Tasks Involved
____Discussion
____Examples
__Implementation
____Tasks Involved
____Discussion
____Examples
__Training
____Tasks Involved
____Discussion
____Examples
__Application Conversion
Nonlabor Costs
__Hardware and Software Costs
____Examples
__Travel and Expense Costs
__User Disruption Costs
Using the Spreadsheet To Calculate Migration Costs
____Example: High-Cost Migration
____Example: Low-Cost Migration
____Example: Typical-Cost Migration
Conclusions and Observations
____Migrations Cost $125 to $500 per Mailbox
____In-Place Migrations Are Least Expensive
____Typical Corporate Migrations Cost $300 per Mailbox
____Some Migrations Cost Up to $700 per Mailbox
____Hardware and Software Represent the Greatest Cost
____Leased Servers Can Slash Hardware Costs
____Physical Implementation Is the Second Largest Cost
____Upfront Planning Pays Off Big Time
____Good Economies of Scale
____End-User Disruption Is Costly
____Third-Party Migration Tools Save $10 to $20 per Mailbox
____Include User Disruption Costs
____End-User Training Hard To Justify Financially
____Laptop Migrations Cost $25 to $2,000 per Mailbox!
____Client Deployment Is Expensive
____Major Upgrades Catalyst for Assessing Alternatives
____Notes Applications Major Barrier to Migration Elsewhere
____Notes Is Sticky During Mergers
____Active Directory Skews Cost of Exchange 2000 Migrations

Important Questions Answered by This Report:

• What are the key categories of cost in an email migration?
• How do organizational and technological factors impact on migration costs?
• What are low, typical, and high migration costs?
• Which migration strategies can reduce effort and duration to migrate?