...make MS's resellers happy; having encouraged them to build a business around hosted Exchange and Sharepoint (and the cheapest I've found is about €7 per month), MS are now going to completely shaft them by massively undercutting their pricing structure. Either they have to cut to compete with MS (but MS can always cut further), or they lose all their customers. Nice.

This beta programme is for US companies *only*, at least until some time later this year, said Ballmer yesterday.

It's an interesting definition of "we're now opening this service up to companies of all sizes" - as long as they're American-sized, presumably.

As a Hosted Exchange reseller im so pleased that MS have decided to completely fuck our pricing structure over, in what is already an extremely competitive market this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back once it's launched worldwide as you know it will be eventually.

so MS can use their software to host the services that you offer??

how is this any different from if I set up a hosted service providing email and such?

from what I've seen most hosted services are a rip off anyway

e.g 1&1 offer 1 exchange mail box for £5.99 per month (£7 after VAT) it's the same price in dollars actually on the .com site!

there is no way it costs this amount to host mail boxes...

perhaps you should look at your business and pricing structure and ammend where needed to make the pricess more fair.

competative industry my arse, it's all about who's willing to run the most streamlined business and provide the best deal to staff...

by my fag packet calculations

1 mail box = £5 per month.

you might pay £5000 a year to upgrade infrastructure and software

and your 1 admin to rn your 1 server might cost £25,000 a year.

total costs are £30,000 a year so you only need 500 customers to make your one server pay off. and pay your admin.

now how about you have 2 servers.

total costs = £35,000 a year

now you only need 584 customers,

why not just restructure your priceing scheme? there are saving that can be made.

plus if you actually offered customers a fair deal, you'd find that you'd sell the service a hell of a lot more as well.

(fag packet calculations are notoriously innaccurate and neglect hosting costs, administrative staff etc. but also i suspect exchange email hosting isn't your only business).

either way the message is clear, either adapt your business and pricing structure or die (as a business).

DR, I think your calculations are forgetting MS license charges for the exchange CALs.

No doubt this is different for US pricing too !

So... you got in the sack with MS and thought you could just have a nice chat? Silly you!

MS have always used their partners as cannon fodder. Get the partners to spill their blood on the bleeding edge, then step in and take the business for their own when they figure out how it works.

They've done that since MSDOS days, screwing over the early applications developers, Lotus, Borland, anti-virus folk.

Why would you think you'd be spared?