Now, a fair warning! This article will not be able to give you the exact costs for your own business. For that you’d need to contact a consultant or contact me… What I am going to provide you however is with some general guidelines on how to asses some of this stuff and have a general idea of costs.

I’m guessing you’ve done the smart thing and realized that you need sharepoint in your business. The thing you really want to figure out next is your costs. How much will it cost you to implement it, integrate it, and get it running? Considering that this is a complex question, I shall try to answer it in the following paragraphs, so pay close attention…

1) Your number one concern is licencing fees. Microsoft can sell you this licence either directly or through one of their gold-certified resellers. You’ll need to find those yourself.

Now, the first thing to do is go step by step. First calculate the cost of the SQL database software. I do recommend getting this first. Then, you need to consider that SharePoint has a pre-requisite of having a licenced windows server, so calculate this as well.

2) The licence system

What microsoft has done is created these two types of licences. One is the standard licence and the other is the enterprise licence. What you will need to do is do some deep thinking of which licences fits the size of your needs and teams.

3) The Hardware Expenses

The big component a lot of people forget is the hardware component. People assume they’re ready for it even though many times they might not be. The software now actually requires a 64bit machine with a bare minimum of 2 gigabytes memory. This can barely fit 200 end-users needs, and if you want more you’ll need some server farms.

4) Consultants Are Not Free (But They Do Pay For Themselves)

Yes, the consultants can be considered as part of the sharepoint expense. They are actually not free. Not only do they have a cost when you hire them, they have an even bigger cost when you don’t hire one. The reason is that you’re almost sure to screw up when you do it on your own and be so far from optimization as to barely gain 50% of the benefits of being on the solution in the first place.

You know choosing Sharepoint Consultants can be a wonderful thing for your business. To find out more about how they can help you implement and configure sharepoint, go here: Choosing Sharepoint Consultants