Not long ago, I received an e-mail from the owner of a business that I provide IT services to. It was forwarded from an intern at the company. Here is what it said:

From: [Intern]
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 12:06 PM
To: [Owner]
Cc: [Admin person]
Subject: Way to save money?

I was doing some research into this, and it may be a way for our company to cut some costs. Google has a more efficient and easy way to control email and calendars than Microsoft exchange server. It removes the need for servers, tapes, etc., for our email system and saves money as well. Granted I don’t know what we pay for the server and IT support, but they break down the costs on the website.

A great benefit: it allows employees to choose to use outlook or Gmail as the client (ie: don’t have to train people who are accustomed to outlook and don’t want to switch – not that Gmail is complicated). We keep all the same email addresses and such, however it allows EVERYONE to check their email and calendars from home, much easier than with the exchange server, and Google syncs the calendar, contacts and emails with outlook so everyone has the same information.
• Because chat is part of Google, quick answers can be received from within the office, rather than having to write up an email, yet it is stored as an email. Below is the link to information on the business premium version of Google apps.
• 25 GB storage per person is also a huge factor. I believe that may be larger than what we currently have with MS exchange.
• Email archiving of up to 10 years of retention
• Better spam controllers (we wouldn’t need our specialty spam software)
• Fully secure web server
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html There are also some videos from some large business who use Google rather than Microsoft here.

This is the link to the cost savings calculator: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging_value.html I find it really interesting the difference in costs. If we were able to save over $100,000 in a 3-year time period by switching, maybe it’s worth it?

Take a look and let me know what you think. I was trying to explain Google Wave to you both last week when we were discussing marketing, and how I think it is the start of what is to come in business communication, and I think Google apps is also in this realm. Personally, I know that I love Gmail and all the applications associated with it, and I think I can speak for [admin person] in that she agrees with me (we’ve both mentioned the “conversation” aspects of Gmail which are incredibly useful at helping organize your inbox).

Thanks,
[An intern at one of my clients]

Here is my response to the customer:

Summary: Switching to Google e-mail will increase your e-mail costs by 40 percent and complicate your infrastructure by decentralizing it.

Truth in advertising:
I think that large enterprises that have entirely different network and software licensing infrastructure from yours might be able to save some money with this. They have huge costs for servers and software that are dedicated to running their e-mail system and don’t have any other roles. Instead, small businesses have less costly servers ($3500) that perform multiple roles, one of which is e-mail.

Google’s figures assume that you’ll be buying two servers at $5,000 each JUST to run your e-mail, that you’ll somehow be paying $3,193 for a ten user license of Exchange, which is about twice the actual cost, assuming a standalone Exchange server that is not part of Small Business Server. The SBS edition combines the e-mail license as part of the overall license, further reducing the cost.

There is also an assumption that your IT admin will spend a bunch of hours specifically working on the e-mail system. That may be true for large businesses, but I’ve hardly touched your e-mail system in years.

The figures on the Google website are inflated, designed to catch your eye. They are not accurate figures for a company of your size and with your e-mail usage.

Also, outsourcing the e-mail to Google will not eliminate the need to have a server or backup system. You’ll still need that for your files, centralized control of user accounts, antivirus control, VPN access, accounting software, etc. So you’re only affecting one component – email. But you’re not eliminating it, you’re moving it further from your control. Also, someone in your company (or paid by your company) still has to manage it whether it’s at Google or in your office. The software licenses for it are tied in with your licenses for the other components of the server. You’ve already paid those licenses.
Your actual IT costs:
Nearly all of the money you have spent maintaining your network has been on things like printers, server OS and file backups, workstation issues, firewall, switch, etc. These other components of your infrastructure would still be needed to run your business and to access and work with your Google Mail. The only money you have spent on e-mail was a result of having more than one e-mail account on your computers, which was not related to hosting your own e-mail.

Your IT costs through BFTech from 3/24/2009 through today have been $3540. That’s just the labor. You’ve also purchased a server. Your total costs are probably more like $7500 – but that included replacing some equipment that was more than 5 years old. Looking through the descriptions of those costs, I see about $350 of that being related to e-mail – your home e-mail, NOT driftmier.com e-mail. You’re paying about $250 per year for the Postini anti-spam service, and a percentage of your antivirus cost is e-mail related. Those are the only ongoing costs that are specifically tied to your e-mail. Let’s call it $500/year combined.

When it is time to replace the Proliant server, which runs your files, printers, user logons and e-mail, that might cost you $10k if I gouge you mercilessly for labor costs and make you upgrade to SBS 2008– but the portion of that cost which will be related to e-mail will be about 15% – so that’s $1500 you’ll be spending on maintaining your e-mail. That happens about every 3-4 years, so that’s between $375 and $500 that can be attributed to e-mail. Let’s say for sake of argument that you replace your server every three years.

So how are you going to save $100,000 in three years when you’re only spending about $2000 in three years on your e-mail?

You’ll save $2 per mailbox per month ($2 x 10 users x 12 months = $250/yr) by not needing to have Postini. That means each month, you can buy an extra pizza and a couple of beers with your savings. Oh, but wait – you’re going to have to pay Google $3,302/year for the privilege of hosting your e-mail with them. So much for the pizza and beer.

In fact, let’s look at that a little more closely. Right now you’re spending about $2000/year in e-mail related costs. Google wants $3302/year for 10 users.

Aren’t numbers great? We can play with them all day and make them say different things.
Features:
Easy access from home/mobile – Right now, your users can check their e-mail from home by just going to [OWA URL]. The logon process for that is no more difficult than the logon process for Google. Their entire mailbox is in there, not just their Inbox, calendar, and contacts. If your users have a Windows Mobile smartphone, or an iPhone, or a Droid, or a Palm smartphone, or a Samsung smartphone, or any number of other mobile phones that support Microsoft ActiveSync, they can work with their e-mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks right from their mobile device.  This support is just as widespread as the Google mail thing – maybe more so at this point.

Chat -  that looks nifty – but if it stores as an e-mail, why not send an e-mail using a web browser, phone, or mail client? Microsoft used to have an IM component built into Exchange. They stopped including it because nobody was using it.

E-mail Conversations and organizing – Outlook has many different views and ways to organize your e-mail, including a Conversation view. This is not an Exchange vs. Google thing. It’s a feature of Outlook, and you can use it no matter what e-mail system you are using.

Storage capacity – 25 GB per user is definitely more than Exchange server supports at your current license level – but who needs that much? Your mailbox, that you have been building up for more than ten years, is 6.5 GB in size. [Intern’s] is 1.2 GB. If we needed more capacity, we could upgrade your Exchange licensing and expand to meet the need, and still come in below Google’s pricing in the medium to long term.

E-mail archiving – also nifty, and if at some point in the future you need it, we should evaluate the costs to implement it on your existing server or migrate to a service like Google mail that includes it.

Integrated anti-spam – that’s a good feature. I like that. See the comment above regarding pizza and beer.

Security – Has anyone hacked your Outlook Web Access server lately?
The bottom line:
You have to support a network infrastructure anyway, for reasons other than e-mail. E-mail is a relatively small portion of your IT costs. You are utilizing a very small percentage of what your Exchange server is capable of. It can be made to do much more.
Google is “the new hotness” – but is your Exchange system “old and busted”?
I don’t think so.

I also submitted this thread to some other consultants on an e-mail distribution list, and here are their responses:

-=-=-

Ellis:

The number one reason I’ve found to recommend an internal e-mail system over any hosted solution is how can a missing message be traced that the business is critically dependent on?  That is the kind of situation where the ability for us to be able to dive into the message tracking logs, filters and other connectivity systems to find out where the connection failed, and this can provide value that outweighs the cost of the entire e-mail system if the message is valuable enough.

-=-=-

Eugene:

By the way, I laughed when I saw the $100,000 in 3 years thing.  When has this customer ever spent $100,000 in 3 years on all their IT (let alone the email portion, as you point out)?  Most small to medium-small business don’t spend that kind of money, so it’s patently impossible for them to _save_ that kind of money.  And since savings are always a proper (obviously) fraction of spend that is well below unity (i.e. well below 100%) – because the new vendor damn well wants a piece of the pie to take to their own bank – they’d have to spend multiple times that – so, multiple hundreds of thousands per 3 years.  Doesn’t happen, as you point out – you set them up with $3,500 budget servers, reasonable compromise backups plans (i.e. no gold-plated tapes stored in nobel-gas-filled earthquake-proof offsite vaults), and only as much consulting as they need to make their email and OWA work in a normal fashion, and your customer’s costs are quite reasonable.

Regarding Intern’s mention of Google Wave: it is not a real thing at this time, and there’s no indication anytime soon that it will be.  Therefore it is a non-feature, with no importance to the client.
See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/18/google_wave_drowning/  – “Google Wave isn’t even close to being ready yet for the average user” (published 9 weeks ago)
-=-=-

Joe:

When it breaks, who do you call and what do you expect?  Notice that Wikipedia.com was offline today?  At this point it’s nice to have a bit of control.  You know what you have, you don’t have to worry about a failure outside of your control.  If something breaks, you can walk over, tap the person on the shoulder and ask what the issue is, and when things will be back up.  Who are you to Google?  How important is your business working to them?

Lets say you want to cut down on costs, what can you cut from Google?  You can have me come in less, do no upgrades, and for the most part things should continue to run at a minimal cost.

I’ll also toss in the large file between users – where it has to be uploaded to the server and then pulled down again (rather than staying on the LAN).  It’s not like the client gets to turn off a server by doing this.  All it’s doing is replacing part of a software package that’s already owned and implemented, to let’s change, and this is how many hours of billable work it is to change.  Change like this is expensive for no savings.

Easy math = My Hourly Rate x Hours to Migrate all existing data into this new setup = more than you would save in 2-3 years time by changing.

-=-=-

Patty:

Agreed on all counts.  I don’t think g-mail tech support could be a replacement for a consultant or on-site help desk when problems arise.  That being said, I also think it would probably be the consultant dealing with that g-mail support and charging the client in turn for the time spent dealing with them rather than just solving the problem directly.  Thanks to Microsoft SBS, the e-mail portion of IT expense is small and would be extremely difficult for any outside vendor to compete with from a cost or functionality standpoint.

-=-=-

Ken:

I think you and others have nailed it on a number of counts, particularly with the point about flexible IT budgeting. Customers like being able to get lean when they have to and then ramp up quickly when they get busy.

-=-=-

Here’s a good account of what can go wrong with this type of service as well:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/cloud-computing2/Networking-Forecast-Cloudy-with-a-Chance-of-Indifference.aspx

Tags: Exchange, Google Mail

The following are some tips and tricks I have picked up when troubleshooting access to Quickbooks files on a server – particularly when they are set up for multi-user access, and the Quickbooks Database Server Manager is installed. QDSM is there to act as a proxy server, intercepting file requests for QBW files and ensuring that no conflicts arise when more than one user opens the file at the same time.

The error message that you get when you try to open the Quickbooks file goes like this:
Error -6000, -83: “An error occurred when QuickBooks tried to access the company file”.
Of course, there are many, MANY hits when searching this error, and most of them are unhelpful. The knowledge base article on the Intuit website is also fairly limited.

Here is my experience with that error and the things that cause it:

1. There are multiple instances of the Quickbooks Database Server Manager running.

Check this by opening the Services applet and looking for services called “QuickbooksDB17, QuickbooksDB19, QuickbooksDB20, etc.” You only need ONE of these. If there are more than one, remove all except the newest one. Multiple instances means you can have conflicts, because they are both trying to serve the same files.

3. The .ND file contains outdated or inaccurate information.

When the QDSM finds a QBW file, it creates a small text file with the .ND extension matching the QBW’s filename. This file contains information about the server hosting the file, the IP address, whether it is available for multi-user access, and which database engine is serving the file to the users. When this information becomes stale, the solution is to delete the .ND file, and tell the QDSM to run a Scan of the folder the QBW files are in to recreate the .ND files. Deleting and recreating these is especially recommended if you have just cleaned up multiple instances of the QDSM service.

4. The NTFS permissions are wrong.

Yes, the Intuit article mentions this, but they are talking about the user’s access to the files. That’s important, and you should check it, but it’s not what I am referring to here. What I am talking about is the permissions for the QDSM user account. When you install the QDSM, it creates a user account with the same name as the service it creates. When it scans and finds QBW files in a folder, it assigns itself NTFS permissions to that folder so it can do its job. When you have uninstalled and reinstalled the QDSM a few times, or perhaps done a server migration, this user account can become disassociated with the QDSM service and things don’t work right anymore. Maybe the old server was a DC, and the new one is not. In that case the old account is an Active Directory user account, and the new one is a local account. they have the same name but the passwords are different, so Access is Denied.

The best thing to do when you suspect you might have this problem is:

a. Remove the Quickbooks account from the NTFS folder permissions anywhere that it has put itself.
b. Uninstall the QDSM.
c. Delete the user account from both AD and the local SAM, wherever you find it.
d. Reinstall the QDSM.
e. Scan the folders where the Quickbooks files are, and let the QDSM reassign NTFS permissions.

If you’re seeing the 6000, 83 error, and you go through the above steps, there’s a very good chance one of them will sort it out for you.

Good Luck!

5. One or more of the workstations have the QDSM installed and are hosting multi-user access.

A lot of users don’t understand the components of the multi-user Quickbooks system, and will install all options and turn everything on. Either they assume more is better, or they don’t know which parts to say “No” to, despite Intuit’s best effort to try making this easier to figure out. If a user has hosting turned on, and they open a shared file on a server, there will be a conflict with the QDSM running on the server, and other users may have trouble opening this file. Go into the Quickbooks program on each workstation and check for multi-user hosting. In a network with a central file server, no user should be hosting. In a peer to peer network, it’s best to pick a workstation that will do all of the hosting and turn it off for everyone else.

Updated: 2010-06-30
Today, I discovered a new and wonderfully annoying way QuickBooks Database Server Manager can make your life difficult.

I had just completed a server migration. I moved all of the files from the old to the new server. The very last thing I did was to add the old server’s name as an alias to the new server, to help make the transition seamless.
The transition was incredibly seamless, except for QuickBooks.
The QuickBooks multi-user hosting setup was not working. I spent a significant amount of time messing with it myself, and then we called QuickBooks support. They spent over two hours and three levels of support trying to fix it, but could not find the problem.
About an hour after we threw in the towel with QuickBooks support, I had a brain wave – but the QuickBooks user had gone home and I didn’t have access to her PC, so it had to wait for this morning. I tried out the new idea this morning, and it solved the problem.
Here is the symptom, then the problem, and the solution:

Symptom:
QDSM would create the .ND file, and it would have the correct contents, including a local file path to the QBW file.
The QuickBooks file would open on a workstation, but could not change to Multi-User Mode. it got an “H202″ error, indicating that it could not communicate with the QDSM.

Problem:
When opening the QBW file from the workstation, the .ND file would get changed by the workstation. Its new contents would point to the data file path using a UNC path. The server name listed in the UNC path was the OLD server name, because the network drive was still mapped using the old server’s name. The old server name still works, and resolves to the new server, so you would think this would not be a problem, but it is. Apparently, QDSM pays attention to the server name being used to attempt the connection, rather than the IP address or other connection method.

Solution:
Disconnect the mapped network drive, and reconnect it using the new server name. Apparently this allows the workstation to communicate with the QDSM using the correct host name, and it works as expected.

Tags: Quickbooks