If your business is still running in-house versions of Microsoft Exchange and Office, you may be needlessly spending over $300 per employee, according to a study by an IT managed services provider.
Organizations that neglect to migrate and utilize their Microsoft Office 365 workloads in the cloud are wasting thousands, perhaps millions of dollars every year according to a recent analysis by Softchoice.
In their examination of customer environments and licensing agreements over the pas year, Softchoice has estimated taht companies currently running on-premise versions of Microsoft Exchange and Office are over spending by about $330 per employee. This would mean that an organization of 5,000 employees could potentially save about $1.65 million annually by migrating the software to the cloud. These savings could be achieved simply by eliminating the cost of maintaining software and infrastructure on-premise, as well as eliminating redundant licenses by taking full advantage of the Office 365 suite.
“Microsoft Office 365 is a full cloud suite designed to drive user productivity, mobility and collaboration. Only when your whole organization embraces more of the full cloud suite do you realize the potential of the service,” said Chris Woodin, Director of Microsoft Business Unit for Softchoice. “However, our analysis shows the majority of Office 365 workloads are being supported from on-premise infrastructure or not utilized at all. Beyond the lost collaboration and productivity advantages, hesitating to migrate workloads to the cloud is costing organizations big time.”
In their evaluation of more than 12 million Office 365 seats across 880 commercial organizations, Softchoice found just 38 percent of all qualified seats are actively deployed in the cloud. A very small majority of Exchange Online (52 percent) and Office ProPlus (50 percent) seats are active in the cloud, however, Skype Online (22 percent) and SharePoint Online (24 percent) are far less utilized. This data shows that many organizations are still challenged to migrate to the cloud, however utilization rates have increased significantly over the past year.
“It can be a daunting, technical process for large organizations to unwind and physically move these apps off-premise, and develop a user adoption plan, which is keeping many from making the journey in the first place,” said Craig McQueen, Director of the Microsoft Practice at Softchoice. “These organizations, however, need to understand there’s a significant cost to that hesitation, and Softchoice can help them realize the long-term financial benefits of cloud while maintaining business continuity and mitigating risk.”
