Skills Shortage Behind High Cost of SharePoint Deployments (Study)

An industry study of Microsoft SharePoint shows that usage of the collaboration platform is growing, but maintenance costs can be high especially given the lack of trained personnel.

An Osterman Research study, "State of the Market," pegs the average cost to manage SharePoint at $46 per user per month. Osterman, which surveyed "more than 120 IT executives, managers, and staffers at mid-to-large enterprises" in August, was commissioned by Seattle-based Azaleos Corp., a provider of management services for e-mail, collaboration and unified communications, based mostly on the Microsoft stack.

Osterman found a similar average management cost for SharePoint of $45 per user per month in a February 2009 survey, which also was commissioned by Azaleos.

So, while SharePoint adoption grows, the management costs are not decreasing, the study concluded. By contrast, Microsoft Exchange management costs were found to be much lower, at around $15 to $25 per user per month.

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