Very basic question: how much does an intranet cost?
How much does one cost to launch, and how much to maintain? How much might the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) be?
I don’t know, but I know from experience that it can be lower than third parties will quote you, and lower than your IT manager will state.
But what’s the financial cost? And remember, once you know the basic cash register cost, you have to factor in people’s time. Managers, stakeholders, designers, coders, techies, administrators – all costs, and they may well be busy with other business.
Let’s throw some numbers on the ground and see which sprout.
£100 per end-user (employee)? £150 per end-user? £50 per user over 300 users? £35 for over 1000 users?
Beyond licensing, you gotta install and build the damn thing.
£10,000 for a server? £5,000 for a Content Management System (CMS) all in? A CMS for free and a few grand on Template design?
Spend millions on MS Sharepoint or SAP and get a free intranet thrown in?
Go to a third party and have them build and host it, online in a matter of days and weeks?
Install, host and build it yourself on your company’s internal network?
There are so many choices, and I’m unsure if any must be addressed first.
So few people have ever built an intranet (we don’t buy new ones and throw old ones away every year do we?) where does one go for unbiased advice and expertise?
I have managed several intranets, and built one, but I can’t claim the choices are east or clear.
[Wedge]This has been a test post from my iPhone.