This sounded like a good way forward for his business but, like any businessman, John wanted to know the cost of this service. It sounded expensive and, although it conferred a number of benefits (including letting Dave spend more time doing the job he was employed to do) John needed to understand the bottom line: how much?

There were a number of options: John could lease the two servers or he could buy them. In the end he chose to buy them outright. He paid well under £3000 for the supply, installation and configuration of the servers, and for each of his existing PCs to be configured to use them. He paid £350 for a website design, and he pays £500 per quarter for management of all services, including backups every night.

This represents approximately what he was paying Dave for the time he spent fixing IT issues. In addition John also has a professionally designed and installed IT infrastructure and someone he can call on for professional IT advice or to discuss changes that may be required.