DesktopLive is quicker to set up
Your new account on DesktopLive can be set up within hours of you signing on the dotted line; you could be live on DesktopLive the same day.
Setting up your company’s account takes about an hour and individual users take literally minutes each. Distribution groups and mailing lists take a little longer, but all can be done in a few hours.
At this point you will be working with a completely new account but with none of your data or e-mail. You will be able to create new documents and new e-mails but it takes time to get all your data and e-mail onto DesktopLive. This can be added as quickly as you can get your data to us.
The only thing then left to do is re-direct your in-bound e-mail. This involves re-directing something called your MX (Mail Exchange) records so your e-mail is delivered to our Exchange servers. This can take up to 48 hours but is usually quicker.
Compare this with a decision to install your own server-based infrastructure:
- Specify the server: couple of hours
- Wait for delivery: up to 21 days
- Build and install the server: up to 2 days
- Migrate data onto the server: depends how much data you have but will be measured in hours, if not days
- Set up user accounts: 20 minutes per user to ensure all the settings are exactly the same as before
Don’t forget that installing the server means downtime for the business, so this is an additional cost whether this is due to downtime during the week or the additional engineering time used at the weekend (usually at a higher rate)
