Easy-TimeShare - The Truly Affordable Connection Method

For smaller businesses, and business with several outlets, or other sophisticated communications problems, it is truly the least expensive alternative, frequently costing far less than in-house systems.

Given that the average cost of our service is $45 to $70 a month, depending upon features, how can this be? Five years of service will cost $2,700, and the user must still provide the computer and the local connection?

The answer is equally simple: today, the largest single cost of computerization is not purchased products, but rather all of the labor services to keep these alive. Professional studies suggest that the average annual total costs of computer use in a multi-user environment amounts to $6,000 per average user year. And clearly, 80% to 90% of this cost goes not into purchased products such as hardware and software, but rather into labor services to train and to keep the system alive.

While MV-DBMS historically has had far lower per user costs: a quarter to a half of this average, there is one inescapable fact - the higher the user count, the less the average user cost. Most multi-user server environments today have a floor cost of $6,000 to $15,000 a year just to keep the server-system alive. This does not include the costs of supporting and improving the software used, nor the costs of maintaining the individual work stations at users' desks. Finally, it does not cover the costs of buying, financing, or repairing the hardware and software used in the server. This last component typically adds a further $2,000 a year to the floor cost.

When you convert these numbers into values per user month, what you find is that the average user cost of the server and its administration is $220-$470 when there are 3 active users, $130-$280 when there are 5, and $65-$140 when there are 10.

In addition to these general administrative costs, the administrative costs of maintaining connections between multiple machines can be quite high as well. For instance, if you farm out proprietary network connectivity to any of the major providers, typical costs would be at a minimum of $4,000 to $10,000 to install each site, and then a further $400 to $1,000 a month in general maintenance and connection fees.

Thus, whether you have a small system or a plethora of sites, Easy-TimeShare will almost always have a lower cost than developing your own solution.