The Radicati Group, Inc. studied seventeen service providers deploying messaging systems from Critical Path, iPlanet, Mirapoint, and Microsoft to find the system with the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

by ISP-Planet Staff [December 28, 2001]

The Radicati Group released "Messaging Total Cost of Ownership" on December 17th, 2001. The study separated enterprise (global 1000) messaging and service provider messaging.

The service provider segment of the study was sponsored in equal parts by Critical Path, iPlanet, Microsoft, and Mirapoint.

Radicati wanted to include Openwave in the TCO study, but the company declined to help Radicati.

Radicati's TCO model made the following salary assumptions (all salaries quoted include benefits, overhead, taxes, and other expenses):

• The salary of a Messaging Administrator is assumed to be $120,000 per year, which is about $58 per hour.
• The salary of a Help Desk Staff member is assumed to be $70,000 per year, which is about $34 per hour.
• The salary of a typical user is assumed to be $60,000 per year, which is about $29 per hour.

Graph courtesy of Mirapoint

The report says that Mirapoint has the lowest TCO over a three-year period, at $0.49 per subscriber (see graph at left). According to the report, Mirapoint's solution is 40 percent more cost-effective to own and operate than its closest competitor.

In addition to lowest overall TCO, Mirapoint also outperformed Critical Path, iPlanet and Microsoft on acquisition costs, maintenance, and installation and configuration.

The enterprise portion of the report surveyed 10 organizations using IBM/Lotus (Notes 5.5) and Microsoft Exchange 2000. Results were not available at press time.

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