First off you should look into using the Microsoft ACE (Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 (or 2013) Redistributable) for reading the excel files as it does allow for a...

are you executing the package on the file system or on Sql Server? and if on Sql Server are you setting it to run asynchronously or synchronously?

if running asynchronously...

In my opinion it all depends on how big your SSIS process is going to be and if the existing servers have a window where the SSIS jobs can run...

These would be my toasters

Agent Ransack - searching for files is a must.

Vim ... (unix guy here so a must)

7zip

works only partially - does not take in consideration that fact that some countries do have Accented alphas so the code as is removes them.

Select dbo.fnTrimNonAlphaCharacters('âáÉéôô') will just return an...

nice post.

I have just one question which may help others also.

Does the fact that you are referencing the Excel object on SSIS require a Excel install on the server?