There is no recession if you're a certified and experienced Microsoft Exchange administrator. Headhunters tell me these techs are earning up to the $100,000 in some parts of the country. So if you or your management have been avoiding hosted e-mail because those services cost money and the belief around your shop is e-mail is free, think again. Then take another look at hosted e-mail services in general, and hosted Exchange services in particular.

Derek Christensen, Information Systems Director for Juice Harvest, trusts his outsourced e-mail hosting provider, Intermedia, for the 100 or so e-mail boxes under his control. He switched a couple of years ago when he decided his in-house e-mail system didn't do enough. When he searched for an Exchange administration specialist, he decided to rethink the Exchange migration plan and signed up with Intermedia instead.

“We did a cost comparison with a three year projection and discovered it was more cost effective to use a hosted service,” Christensen said. “That was especially true when we took into account that we'd have to hire another employee to fully implement Exchange.”

That comment up top about thinking e-mail is free hits home with Christensen. “Our CFO knew much more about the costs in IT, but the president was surprised e-mail wasn't really free. That took some explaining.”

Juice Harvest is a pretty big small business, with around 350 employees. Since plant floor employees don't use e-mail, the company only needs around 100 e-mail accounts. But those users need a full range of e-mail services.

“We're growing, and we need collaboration and shared calendars,” said Christensen. “Over the last year and a half we started deploying Blackberry devices to managers. We need those mobile features for our e-mail to be fully functional.”

Don't lump Juice Harvest into “the cloud is our life” group of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) fans, because Intermedia's service is the only hosted application the company uses. “The core of our system is ERP, and our vendor doesn't offer a SaaS option,” Christensen said. “We're just getting into a major sales push, so we may need a SaaS solution for our sales staff before long.”

Pricing for Intermedia's services vary widely depending on how many features you opt for and the total number of users. A rule of thumb for most hosted Exchange providers is $10-$15 per user per month.