Is there a lower TCO for Windows Mobile at your company?
The tool was built by Alinean, Inc. for Microsoft and offers you a way to step through an online sheet to compare the TCO of a Windows Mobile solution compared to other messaging solution, including a RIM BlackBerry Enterprise Server, hosted BES, other messaging solution or other hosted messaging solution. Inputs include the type of industry you are in, the location of your company, how many employees you have, and how many (if any) Exchange servers you have. You can save your different comparisons and print them out as PDF documents.
As Jason points out on his blog, the tool doesn't just compare data and device costs, but shows you estimated costs for the following:
- Infrastructure acquisition
- Infrastructure setup
- IT support
- Data center server administration
- Help desk
- Infrastructure software maintenance
- User phone/data plans
- Technical support
I ran through a few test cases for my company and the Windows Mobile solution had the lower TCO when compared to other solutions. It seems one of the costs with the biggest difference was labeled as Mobile Messaging Device Support & Maintenance Contracts. Thanks to Mobility Site for the link.