SharePoint 2010 Hosting vs. In-House Deployments? What Is the Cost Benefit?

By Laurie Head
AIS Network Vice President

SharePoint managers everywhere are asking themselves, “Why should I spend money on SharePoint servers?”

Well, with on-premise IT costs soaring, they’re absolutely justified in asking that question. On-premise hosting has become much less cost-effective than outsourced hosting. Quite simply, hosting SharePoint 2010 with an experienced hosting provider saves you money and worry.

In belt-tightening times, the combined expense of SharePoint 2010 servers, technical staff and data security can be painful to a company. Why have the IT staff spend half their day fixing, patching and managing SharePoint servers, when they could utilize their time in better ways to help grow the company? Hosted SharePoint, which typically comes with a team of SharePoint hosting experts, is simply “better, faster and cheaper.” What’s not to like about that?

That’s my opinion, anyway, but how do you decide for yourself? Well, ask yourself a few questions first.

1. Capital. How much up-front capital is required to deploy and maintain your SharePoint infrastructure? How much does it cost you to upgrade it on a regular basis? (After you figure this out, the predictable monthly costs of hosting may be highly appealing.)
2. Agility and flexibility. Can you adapt to change quickly? Can you move rapidly to deploy new features of your SharePoint infrastructure and/or make changes (we’re talking days, not weeks or months)?
3. Maintenance. Do you have adequate resources to maintain your SharePoint installation? Are you comfortably budgeted for staff and training? Do you have a cushion for unanticipated expenses? Do you have enough real estate in your data center to accommodate your growing SharePoint infrastructure?
4. Confidence. Can you say, confidently, that your data center is physically secure, disaster-resilient, fully compliant, highly available and capable of providing superior uptime? Can it withstand a destructive storm?
5. Expertise. Do you have highly trained staff who can build out, configure, deploy and administer your infrastructure?

With fully managed SharePoint hosting services, you’ll never again have to buy another SharePoint server and figure out where to locate it in-house. You’ll never have to hassle with a flawed SharePoint deployment or wait months to deploy new features. You’ll never have to deploy, patch, update, troubleshoot, monitor, or administer your SharePoint infrastructure again. You’ll never have to shell out big bucks for storage or staff training. Moreover, licensing is so much easier when you’re working with a hosting provider. And, it’s highly unlikely that you will have to worry about bad storms, physical security, performance and reliability.

Most of all, however, doing it all in-house can be cost-prohibitive. Hosted SharePoint can be a much cheaper alternative.

For example, our SharePoint hosting plans can help you get off the SharePoint-spending treadmill and save you up to 91% in hardware and support costs when compared to in-house SharePoint deployment. Have a look at this brief chart.

SharePoint 2010: Hosting vs. In-House?

A Comparison of Major SharePoint Hardware & Support Costs.

Hosting With AISN Slashes Your Hardware and Support Costs Significantly.

Need help comparing your costs? Contact our sales team today at sales@aisn.net.

Further information about hosted SharePoint is also available in our whitepaper.