Or to go one step further, more money will be going into your business rather than the system that struggles to support it. The on demand model affords customers greater flexibility in accessibility and product, hassle free hosting of information, upgrades year round and greater security of information, just to name a few perks!

For those not using on demand CRM allow me to break down its cost effectiveness versus out of the box or custom built solutions:

For starters you can take your current IT costs and subtract all your hours and dollars spent on system maintenance, upgrades, integration and up keep.

Now further subtract the cost incurred for hosting your current network or CRM application. If it is in house then you can deduce server costs, power costs etc… If you host via third party you can go ahead and drop that cost all together.

So things are starting to look a little brighter!

For those who currently use an out of the box CRM system, you can go ahead and knock off the costs incurred for support, training, customization and yearly upgrades, and every other hidden fee you incur.

I am sure that by now some of you are probably feeling a little skeptical; and I don’t blame you, the potential to save this much money definitely warrants some initial second guessing. But don’t let me convince you, see for yourself and put your worries to rest once and for all.

No upfront costs – with on demand CRM, the software is already built and it is entirely hosted online, all you have to do is subscribe and start using it.

No downloads – the on demand CRM platform ensures you are never burdened by continual downloads cluttering up your computer and network while slowly eating up your memory.

No hosting fees – the on demand platform is designed, built and maintained by an expert IT staff, hosted at an external secure location with manned security personnel. Enabling you the user to focus solely on your business and only your business.

Customizable platform – the on demand SaaS platform is readily customizable by expert developers and product engineers. No longer will you have to fork over thousands of dollars to mash stand alone legacy systems into a tedious and often bug ridden enterprise solution.

Free upgrades – with the flexibility of the on demand CRM model, top CRM vendors can offer continual and seamless updates and enhancements to their solution.

Security of Information – a common misconception with the on demand platform is the issue of information security. While many find comfort in having their information hosted on site, they are in fact more vulnerable to intruders or hackers, or disgruntled employees then they would be by using the ASP/on demand platform. A good CRM vendor out sources the hosting of their servers to ISP providers, thus guaranteeing greater security and up time for their customers.

There is no denying the aforementioned facts, on demand CRM offers you greater bang for your buck when compared to the conventional out of the box offerings. On demand CRM removes the headaches of IT maintenance along with its hefty costs, it optimizes your employee work rate and in turn, allows you to bring in more money while spending less. Not to mention your company info could not be more secure!

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Colin Duffy enjoys writing about CRM subjects and on demand CRM and ERP software vendors such as Salesboom ( http://www.salesboom.com )

OSDL and member company Levanta are citing a co-sponsored study from “vendor neutral” Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) that claims Microsoft’s information is outdated and inaccurate.

Microsoft has cited earlier studies by industry analysts on the Get The Facts section of its website, an information page devoted purely to discrediting its open source competition, to convey the message that Linux TCO was higher than Windows’.

The EMA report, entittled “Get the Truth on Linux Management,” maintains that enterprises running Linux are actually spending less time and money on common systems administration tasks than they are with the comparable Windows environments.

”For too long, special interest groups have attacked the manageability of Linux, and fueled the F.U.D. that Linux environments are somehow more difficult or labor-intensive to manage than Windows environments,” said Stuart Cohen, CEO of the Open Source Development Labs.

”In fact, Linux system management tools are in many cases outpacing Windows management tools.”

The study, which polled over 200 enterprises, found that organizations managing Linux environments found that Linux outperformed Windows in productivity, provisioning, patch management, problem resolution, and management and support.

Findings from the report:

Productivity – Linux tends to be more productive, as Linux administrators tend to manage more servers than Windows administrators, and Linux systems tend to handle greater workloads than Windows systems.

Management and support – 88% of enterprises with Linux and Windows spend less effort managing Linux; 97% believe it is, at worst, the same for both systems. Respondents with sophisticated management tools all report Linux management is the same or easier than Windows management.

‘Past Microsoft-sponsored reports on Linux management are simply outdated and one-sided,” said Matt Mossman, CEO of Levanta. ”The EMA study has confirmed what the Linux community has known to be true for some time now – that the F.U.D is unfounded, and that management doesn’t have to be viewed as a red flag when considering the overall TCO of Linux.”

Recently, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates suggested that MIT’s Linux-based $100 laptops were a poor alternative to Microsoft’s cellular phone plug-ins, prompting discussion about software politics even in the non-profit sector.

A full download of the report can be found here.

Embedded databases have arrived in this scenario as a major cost-cutting tool. They help organizations in managing the growing storage requirements by providing a cost-effective and reliable solution for data backup, file storage and archiving, thereby assuring a lower cost of ownership for small to medium sized business organizations.

The remainder of this article will focus on the database server that I am most familiar with (Daffodil DB) and how it helps in the reduction of TCO. Though the example has some nuances specific to Daffodil DB, I am sure that readers will be able to extrapolate the theme to better understand the role of a database in TCO reduction.

Let’s begin with Development and Deployment Costs. Gone are the days when applications had to be tested extensively for all underlying platforms. Now, one can shrink the cost and time required to develop and setup solutions on multiple platforms by using a Java database. A separate deployment for different platform implementations of a large application is a major expense that an enterprise can do without.

Administration Costs are a major concern for many-a-company. Logically, database administration costs are a significant component of TCO. When embedded with an application, a compact Java database can be made practically invisible to the user, since it (the database) requires no administration and runs on the same Java virtual machine (JVM) as does the application. Its simple performance tuning process helps in optimizing database performance and vastly reduces database administration costs.

Now let’s move on to Compatibility Cost. Java databases, being platform independent, are compatible with all operating systems and application servers. This feature helps developers in choosing their own range of effective and economical solutions. For example, with Daffodil DB the developer can use Open Source tools like JBOSS application server for reducing overall TCO.

Last, but certainly not the least, let’s get to Licensing Costs. Pardon me if I seem to evangelize Daffodil DB, but that’s one area where I can preach’ with confidence. As Daffodil DB can be used / embedded with a wide array of applications, flexible licensing policies have been developed to accommodate the diverse needs of the development community without restricting the same to just one standard license. Each application development organization may pick the right combination of licenses that best meets its needs. The organizations may also acquire additional licenses or upgrade their licenses. Do I hear someone shout What about Open Source?’

This article has been contributed by (Mr.) Parveen Aggarwal, Technical Consultant to DSL India (http://www.daffodildb.com). With more than 6 years of industry experience in Java and allied technologies, he has an in-depth understanding of J2EE, J2ME and database management systems. Parveen is currently working on the concept of data-archiving in embedded databases. He can be contacted at parveenaggarwal@hotmail.com

Newer messaging solutions have important productivity enhancements, and the high total cost of ownership (TCO) of these older generation e-mail solutions offers a significant savings opportunity. As a result, many companies are upgrading their e-mail infrastructure. The latest platforms, such as Microsoft’s Exchange 2003, are expected to grow from 10% of the installed base in 2003 to more than 35% in 2004.

Microsoft Exchange 5.5 TCO – An opportunity for savings

In a recent study, Alinean modeled the current TCO for typical Microsoft Exchange 5.5 environments between 100 and 500 users, and found that administration and support costs surpass $299 per user annually for a typical 100 – 500 person installation, and requires between one and two full time equivalents (FTEs) to administer and support the environment.

In fact, 90% of direct costs for Microsoft Exchange 5.5 are for administration and support labor, placing a significant ongoing burden on IT operations and support.

When service levels are considered in the TCO equation for Microsoft Exchange 5.5, the costs increase dramatically. Most Microsoft Exchange 5.5 installations achieve, at best, only 98.5% availability. Each messaging downtime hour in a 500-person organization amounts to $8,600 in real productivity losses – costing more than $400,000 annually. In a 100-person organization, the expense exceeds $1,700 in productivity losses per messaging downtime hour. With more than 40 hours of messaging downtime annually in a typical Microsoft Exchange 5.5 installation, downtime losses can easily surpass $800 per user, per year.

The TCO for a typical 100 – 500 user Microsoft Exchange 5.5 enterprise is more than $1,100 per user, per year.

Reducing TCO with a Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003 migration

As a result of the high TCO of Microsoft Exchange 5.5 and the difficulty in scaling Microsoft Exchange 5.5 to meet mailbox storage and user growth demands, many organizations have been eagerly migrating to Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003 over the past two years.

Assessments of Microsoft Exchange 2000 consolidations and migrations indicate that the savings are indeed compelling. More than $100 can be saved annually per user in direct administration, support and overhead savings. Even more savings, $600+ annually per user, can be achieved with gains in availability, improved service levels and reduced downtime.

Understandably, this consolidation and migration requires a significant capital investment for new servers and software, as well as essential technical resources to help setup, migrate and deploy the e-mail systems and applications. Newer versions of Exchange require Active Directory. Therefore the migration to Exchange is typically accompanied by Active Directory implementations and server consolidations yielding additional best practices and savings. However, this process does make for a more costly and daunting (i.e. risky) project. For a typical 500-person company, the deployment investment is expected to cost more than $240 per user. For a typical 100-person installation, the migration costs are even higher, surpassing $370 per user.

Consolidation and migration costs typically include:

A typical 500-user migration can easily exceed $120,000, and take more than six months of planning, procurement, setup, migration and deployment. A typical 100-user installation can top $50,000 and take from two to three months.

Migration to Microsoft Exchange 2000 typically requires an initial investment of more than $100,000 for a 500-user enterprise.

The migration or upgrade from Microsoft Exchange 5.5 to Microsoft Exchange 2003 is compelling from a business perspective. While this upgrade can be quite daunting to a resource-constrained IT organization, the bottom-line benefits justify the costs: a typical 500-user organization can achieve an ROI of more than 300%, and an expected payback post-deployment of four months. As employees require richer messaging capabilities, especially remote and wireless access, shared scheduling and calendaring, task management and global address lists, newer generation messaging software delivers an impressive ROI and frees up valuable technology and staff resources.

Tom Pisello is the CEO of Orlando-based Alinean, the ROI consultancy helping CIOs, consultants and vendors assess and articulate the business value of IT investments. He can be reached at tpisello@alinean.com