Did you know it can cost your organization as much as $50 per person per month just for their email service?  that's what Inc. magazine estimates (May 2008) when you consider such costs as Spam control, system crashes, increasing server capacity to handle demand, and your inhouse support payroll.  In fact, for companies with less than $250 million in annual revenues, the average cost per employee for IT costs came in at $6,120.

No wonder so much press has been given to the concept of outsourcing as much of the IT activities as possible.

On the email front, many companies are looking at hosted options offered by such companies as BlueTie, FuseMail, Everyone.net, and mailtrust where costs can plummet to as little as $1 to $15 per month!  In conjunction with that, the logical next step is in software hosted on the web, where veterans Salesforce.com and NetSuite are just two examples.  The advantage with these hosted applications is upgrade costs are minimized as is techical support.

Some companies are looking to Virtual Phone Systems to also save money, engaging such providers as GotVMail, RingCentral, Packet8 and Virtual PBX.

When looking at these cost saving alternatives, do not forget to examine the impact these changes will bring to your employees.  And your customers!  Will employee efficiency improve?  Will customers find their satisfaction levels climbing or plummeting?

Before making any switch, know in advance what the worst-case scenario will cost you--especially if you must abort and return to the status quo.