Yesterday Microsoft Corp. announced plans to make its Entourage v. X software work with Microsoft Exchange servers, enabling Mac Entourage to finally work as a collaborative personal information management system used in many larger corporate environments.
The news has provoked a response from Now Software, which said that Exchange deployment will be “prohibitively expensive” for small and medium sized businesses.
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Now Software develops and publishes Now Up-to-Date & Contact, a contact management and calendaring system that works on both Mac OS and Windows. Now Software claims that their solution works without incurring the same up-front and maintenance costs involved in Exchange.
Calling Microsoft’s decision to support Exchange in an OS X environment good news, Now Software CEO John Wallace said that Exchange might not be affordable for many businesses.
“Small and mid-sized companies will find that the total cost of ownership will be too high,” said Wallace. He illustrated his claim by citing an example of one company with 50 employees that outlaid $6 – $7 thousand a month to maintain an Exchange server/client system.