Online Services Business Scenarios (Sidebar)

While Microsoft suggests that companies may want to license their users for both on-premise and online services, that approach may not be economically or technically feasible for many companies because of limited integration between the two architectures and the cost of maintaining duplicate systems and licenses. However, many companies may find it useful to split their workforce into on-premise and online communities, thus reducing the costs of on-premise systems and gaining greater flexibility overall.

Azaleos, a vendor of management services for such "hybrid" systems—it provides remote management of on-premise Exchange and SharePoint systems and has extended Exchange monitoring to Microsoft's Exchange Online service as well—has identified several scenarios where hybrid systems can play a role.

Split-role provisioning, in which knowledge workers use faster and more capable on-premise systems while deskless workers use online servers.

Acquisitions in which an acquired company can be moved quickly to an online system under the new owner's domain, reducing integration time and complexity, while the acquiring company's own employees can continue with on-premise servers.

Transitional use, in which specific departments or work groups test online services while others continue to use on-premise systems.

Security and compliance requirements for a specific group, such as financial operations, may not be satisfied by online systems (where data is on a remote hoster's servers). Other groups may not face these restrictions for use of online systems.

Beta trials, such as tests of Exchange 2010 (when available), could use the online service with no disruption to users of the on-premise server. In contrast, testing Exchange 2010 on premise could impact production systems and might require companywide upgrades of Client Access Licenses even for employees not using Exchange 2010.

Branch office computing, where the cost of local IT staff and server management may be very high on a per-user basis. The company headquarters could retain IT specialists and continue to use on-premise servers, which can handle large data sets and particularly demanding or customized tasks, such as business intelligence and forecasting.

External contractors or outsourcers, who might otherwise require the use of costly External Connectors in order to access a corporate e-mail system (an Exchange External Connector can cost more than US$60,000 per server). These parties can instead use relatively inexpensive—and transferable—User Subscription Licenses on a hosted e-mail server.

"First server" customers, such as very small organizations that have grown to the point where peer-to-peer networking and generic Web e-mail no longer serve their purposes, but who want to avoid the cost of hiring professional IT help in order to enable better collaboration and communication among users.