You can see email support headcount figures for a wide variety of organizations here--see comments further down this page. These are selections from the 136 responses we received to the survey below. The survey was conducted in March and April 2008, and is now closed.
There is also a report detailing the survey results. For information about the report, "Email Support Staff Requirements and Costs," click here.
Many thanks--David Ferris and Richi Jennings
Q1. Which are you using?
- Exchange 2007
- Exchange 2003
- Other Exchange
- Notes/Domino 8
- Notes/Domino 7
- Notes/Domino 6
- Other Notes/Domino
- GroupWise 5
- GroupWise 6
- GroupWise 7
Q2. How many email users in your system?
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM?
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents?
- Don't include general email helpdesk time
- Notes respondents: only include mail admin FTEs, not the writing and admin of Notes apps
- We're interested in full-time equivalent head count. So eg if you have one full time Exchange admin, and three people who spend half their time on Exchange admin, that's 2.5 full-time equivalents
Q5. Do you have any other comments?
One Comment
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Which are you using? Notes/Domino 7.02
How many email users in your system? Roughly 8,000
How many instant messaging users do you have that use Sametime? Roughly 2,200
Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 2.5
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Exchange 2003
How many email users in your system? 37000
How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS or Sametime? 0
Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 6
Do you have any other comments that might help us? We don’t have enough staff. We also support the Outlook client.
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Notes/Domino 7
How many email users in your system? ~22
How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS or Sametime? Sametime = 22
Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 1
We started with domino 4.x 7 years ago and the amount of time we spend administering and managing is very little. Our upgrade to Domino 8.0.1 is coming within the next few months. Our biggest time spent is during upgrades and rolling out all of our template and database modifications.
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Notes/Domino 7 & Notes/Domino 6
How many email users in your system? 10,000 globally
How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS or Sametime? 6,500 using integrated Sametime within their Notes clients.
Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 3 FTEs as “Collaboration Engineers”
Our 3 FTEs are very busy. We have 3 regional data centers across the globe, a widely dispersed end-user base and multiple “collaborative technologies” these individuals support, including Domino Servers, Notes client engineering, Notes client 3rd-level support, BlackBerry Servers, Sametime Servers, etc.
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Exchange 2007
How many email users in your system? 250
How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS or Sametime? 0
Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 0.1 – 0.2
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Exchange 2003, in 85 locations globally.
78,000 mailboxes
All mail users can use Instant messaging based still on the Exchange 2000 IM infrastructure. We are in the process of migrating to LCS in the very near future.
Supporting staff:
* operational support team is 14 FTE globally, (without the team lead)
* engineering support currently 4 FTE globally, (without the team lead)
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Exchange 2003
How many email users in your system? 31000
How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS or Sametime? 2000
Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents?
* 7.5 – Exchange (including perimeter AV, AS)
* 1.5 – OCS
* 2.5 – Blackberry (2500 Blackberry devices supported by BES)
Do you have any other comments that might help us?
Highly distributed environment. 5 data centers with clients spread from coast-to-coast.
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Which are you using? Exchange 2003
How many email users in your system? 1800 users/2500 mailboxes (shared, resource, etc.)
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? 20 LCS (small test bed)
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 1 FTE
Q5. Do you have any other comments? We have Help Desk staff doing mailbox provisioning and minor modifications (change name, SMTP address, etc.).
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Q1. Which are you using? * GroupWise 7
Q2. How many email users in your system? 55
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? 0
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 1
Here’s one of the replies–not quoting respondent for anonymity’s sake:
Q1. Which are you using? * GroupWise 7
Q2. How many email users in your system? * 1300
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? * 250 (GroupWise IM)
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? * .33 – That’s 1 person, 33% of time
Q5. Do you have any other comments?
* I spend 33% of my time managing our GroupWise system (other than helpdesk basics like client installs and password resets). That leaves me enough time to also manage the NetWare cluster, SAN and VMware implementations we have.
* We recently had a handful of users that could not live without some specific Outlook functionality, so we gave them the Outlook client and used the GroupWise Connector for it. They were so lost in the client trying to find the things that they could do with their eyes closed in GroupWise that they have now all switched back to GroupWise. The learning curve for them was so steep (no training available at this time) that they would rather do double-entry and waste an hour or two a week than figure out the Outlook client and it’s idiosyncrasies.
We have 10k GW 6.5 and 7.0.2 email users.. My question has anyone compared Enchange with GW and if you moved too MS from GW or from MS GW… WHY?
Q1: E2003 SP2
Q2: 10.000
Q3: 0
Q4: 3 FTE
Q5: no
Q1. Which are you using?
Exchange 2007
Q2. How many email users in your system?
7000+
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM?
Coming soon
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents?
.5FTE
Q5. Do you have any other comments?
Q1. Which are you using?
Exchange 2003 SP2
will upgrade to 2007 in summer 2008
Q2. How many email users in your system?
180
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM?
LCS: 180
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents?
1
Q5. Do you have any other comments?
Q1. Which are you using?
* Exchange 2003
Q2. How many email users in your system? @ 1000
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? @100
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents?
2
Q5. Do you have any other comments? BES’es in place, as well as an Archive system.
Quick Admin Headcount Survey
Q1. Which are you using?
Exchange 2003
Q2. How many email users in your system?
33,000
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use OCS IM?
5,000
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents?
4
Q1. Which are you using?
GroupWise 7
Q2. How many email users in your system? 270
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? 0
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 0.1 FTE
Q5. Do you have any other comments? GroupWise just runs.
1. E2K3 SP2
2. about 2500
3. 0
4. 2.5
There is 1 full time exchange engineer, 1 half time engineer and 3 helpdesk that assist with account creation and level one outlook issues.
We really need 1 more fulltime engineer and one more mid level person.
Response in which sender identification has been removed to respect his/her anonymity:
Q1. GroupWise 7.0.2
Q2. 2500
Q3. 250
Q4. 1.5
Response in which sender identification has been removed to respect his/her anonymity:
Q1. Exchange 2007
Q2. 600
Q3. 0
Q4. 1
1) We’re using Notes/Domino 7.0.2 (in the process of upgrading to 8.0.1 over the next 3 months).
2) We have about 11,000 users and almost 2,000 Rooms/Resources or Mail-In Databases (like public folders)
3) We haven’t pushed Sametime use it’s available for those that want it & know about it. We see about 2,000 users max. / day.
4) We have about 2.5 FTE’s support Email/IM
5) We have 4 servers (AIX) hosting mail files plus two acting as SMTP gateways split across two sites for full redunacy with real time replication so we can’t really do any more server consolidation.
Also about 3/4 of our users have access to DWA only (iNotes) as they are in low bandwidth sites or don’t need the full function of the Notes client.
Response in which sender identification has been removed to respect his/her anonymity:
Q1. Which are you using? Exchange 2003
Q2. How many email users in your system? 45,000
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? 150
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 6
Response in which sender identification has been removed to respect his/her anonymity:
Q1. Which are you using?
* Exchange 2007 – piloting with 35 users
* Exchange 2003 – our production system
Q2. How many email users in your system? Approximately 7000
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? Several thousand LCS users (no way to count actual users)
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? Just to keep it running, 1 FTE is about right. But for any project work – upgrading to new version of Exchange or OCS, implementing UM, replacing public folders with Sharepoint, implementing archiving and retention – you need at least one more highly skilled FTE
* Don’t include general email helpdesk time
* Notes respondents: only include mail admin FTEs, not the writing and admin of Notes apps
* We’re interested in full-time equivalent head count. So eg if you have one full time Exchange admin, and three people who spend half their time on Exchange admin, that’s 2.5 full-time equivalents
Q5. Do you have any other comments?
The summary’s not ready yet. Probably later this month, once the replies have stopped coming in.
Thanks,
r.
Q1. Which are you using?
GroupWise 7
Q2. How many email users in your system?
15000
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM?
GW IM – Approx 2-3000 that we know about.
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents?
Approx 2. (Does not include account creation, decommisioning, etc done by Help Desk.)
Q5. Do you have any other comments
27 domains (1 at each site, plus HQ), 39 POs, more than 2 TB of mail in user and shared boxes (archives, don’t ask) and yet the largest chunk of of our time supporting GW is spent responding to HIPPA and other regulatory req’s. Much of the rest is user training issues (“How do I show two calendars at once?”). GW rarely has problems, almost never crashes even 1 PO, NEVER goes down completely, and has not needed a security patch in more than a year. The last patch, other than client enhancements, was for DST change in Feb of 2007.
I used to be one of 5 Exchange Admins (2.5 FTE)- to support 2500 users! Our current staff of 5 supports the entire Novell environment – 17000 GW users, Govt mandated “save everything” archiving, several hundred Blackberries and Palms, 35 NetWare clusters with iSCSI SANs, all printing, (NW iPrint) HSM, Identity Management, and the Novell client for Win. We are currently in the deployment of true SANs to replace iSCSI ones. Are we busy? You bet; some projects do get delayed. But do we manage? Yes.
Response in which sender identification has been removed to respect his/her anonymity:
Q1. Which are you using?
Exchange 2007
Q2. How many email users in your system? 1000
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? 1000
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 2
Q5. Do you have any other comments? Interested in the data.
Exchange 2003
50,000 mailboxes Globally
100 LCS accounts (Pilot phase only)
2 operations people
1 Engineer
1 Manager
Comments: We are very understaffed and have recently purchased new companies. Integration is taking up all of our time!
Q1. Which are you using?
* GroupWise 7
Q2. How many email users in your system? 8000
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM? 1000 & growing
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents? 1 fulltime engineer + 3 FTE for local support (45 sites worldwide)
Q5. Do you have any other comments?
Q1. Which are you using?
Both
* Notes/Domino 7
* Notes/Domino 6
Q2. How many email users in your system?
800
Q3. How many instant messaging users do you have that use LCS/OCS, Sametime, or GroupWise IM?
None
Q4. Thinking about your IT staff who manage and operate your email and instant messaging system, how many people are required world-wide, judged in terms of full-time equivalents?
1.5
Q5. Do you have any other comments?
No