Cheers! Will take a look at that!
What do you think about hosting ones own exchange server, would it be cheaper, more or less reliable than a cloud hosted one, and in terms of costing...
Cheaper:
Hell no,
Why:
1) licensing*:
You require a server license, lets say you opt for a single server deployment you are looking @ R10-15k
You require a user call for each user, that's around R500 per user
You need an Exchange license, that's around R10k
You require Exchange CALs for each user, that's another R1k per user.
That gives you the basics, now you need the thing something to install it on, I am going to say R50k to be safe. This gives you slow storage and basic hardware support (Next business day when something goes wrong).
You will need a certificate for devices connecting to Exchange, no sure about this (we use StartSSL as we issue certificates almost weekly) but it should be around R1k.
The above will occur every 3-5 years depending on what your company's hardware replacement cycle is.
2) Configuration and support
I cannot comment on what the setup would cost but from a support point of view you are looking at anything from R500-R1000 per hour when it goes belly up. Exchange is fast becoming a responsibility that no one wants and as a result the rates for support is going up.
You might be able to find companies prepared to do it for less but the long term results of having a fly by night IT company having a go at your Exchange won't be great.
*I have no idea what licensing costs now, the above is an indication based on when I was more involved in costings which was 3 years ago so pricing is at the very least what I have stated.
Alternatively you have the option to rent licensing from someone (through a program which allows IT providers to lease MS licensing on a monthly basis) but the savings by going this route vs Office365 is small.
Reliability:
Not easily
We have a multi tenant Exchange deployment and no matter how much we put in place to protect the environment in reality it is hard to be more reliable then someone like Microsoft at the scale which they have.
Don't get me wrong though, there are loads of people who host their own Exchanges and there is nothing wrong with this, just make sure you can afford it and support it. Our company still supports far more on prem deployments then we would like to but almost everyone (who isn't forced by law to host locally) has 365 deployments on their roadmap.
