I have a customer that is refusing to move forward with a trial BES because they were told by someone that a server for groupwise (not sure exactly what this means since they are already running Groupwise) would cost approx 5k and the SQL server would cost 3k. On top of that, there is the cost of a 20 user groupwise BES plus 20 CALS. This seems very high but wanted to run it past you folks to see if Groupwise requires anything crazy that Exchange doesn't. I know you can get a box for $800-1000 that meets the requirements for an Exchange server but need some assistance with this one. Isnt SQL only needed for over 100 devices? Any and all assistance is greatly appreciated.

The same requirements are involved. I honestly think that $5,000 on hardware for a BES is a HUGE overkill. I think I paid under $3,000 for an IBM xSeries 336 w/ 2x74GB drives in RAID1, Xeon 3.2GHz, and 2GB RAM used for our SQL server for the environment (but is more powerful than our BES servers, which are Dell PE1700 w/ 3x36GB drives in RAID5, Xeon 2.4GHz, and 2GB RAM). I have never come close to using up any aspect of the resources, and this was even running SQL on the BES servers prior to getting the remote server.

We run SQL just because its our standard for MS databases (when its an option), but MSDE is more than fine.

I'd say they're looking at about $4,500-5,000 for software (BES+Windows), licenses (BES CALs) and hardware (something decent).

Thx...im wondering now if it was just a ploy to keep the carrier out of the acct. I knew it sounded off the charts.....any tips?

I'd say to wait until bfrye gets on here just to make sure. He's by far the biggest Groupwise admin on here... just to make sure there are no other costs that I'm leaving out.

Those prices are WAY high for a Novell BES integration.

The most expensive part of this deal is the BES license $3,300 (20 User).

The hardware can be had for next to nothing, inface we put up the new Dell 1850 (Dual SATA's) with single proc (dual capable). WAY more then needed.

Add in the SQL license, and the OS and you can damn near do the entire deal for under 5K.

Someone is spooking your customer. Bring a propose to them with hard numbers, it will be WAY less then they think.

JW

You don't even need to throw in the SQL license, as mentioned, though. If its 20 users, MSDE 2000 is WAY more than sufficient (unless the customer is like my company). But yes, I think $5,000 would be the maximum you'd spend.

We run GroupWise BES. The BES license is $3300. For 20 users, MSDE is fine. You could easily get a server for $2500 that would sufficient.

I would definately say $5,000 would buy you a nice server, your BES/windows licenses and CAL's. As mentioned before, you'll be just fine with 20 users running MSDE. I think ours ran fine up to 35-40 users before we started seeing some lag from the lack of concurrent database connections due to using MSDE.

Just have to ask your client if $5,000 is worth the productivity gained by 24hr instant email you gain from a blackberry.

Check with your carriers as well. I know they sometimes run a promotion giving away the BES licenses and CAL's if you purchase devices. For instance, TMobile was running a promotion last month if you bought and activated up to 20 7730's with service (~$80 per device per month), you would get a free BES license, along with 1 CAL for each device you purchased. I'm sure you can work out deals with other carriers as well along the same lines. The carriers have the ability to bargain on BES prices since they barely make any money from selling the server and make all theirs in airtime and service charges. If you are running BES, they know you will use the device 10x more than typical phones or non-BES enabled devices and they can make more money from the usage as well