It has been calculated that ShoreTel delivers the lowest first-year and five-year costs against eight competitors in a study by Nemertes Research for IP telephony and on-premises Unified Communications.
In addition, ShoreTel is judged to have the lowest operational costs for both and the lowest implementation costs for on-premises UC, according to the study.
Nemertes conducted a study of 264 organisations to gather real-world cost data for nine leading IP telephony and Unified Communications vendors. The companies interviewed and surveyed represented a range of industries and sizes, primarily in North America.
ShoreTel's first-year costs for IP Telephony across all size rollouts are $566 compared to a median of $717 across all vendors. ShoreTel also maintains the lowest first-year operational costs for all size rollouts, as well as the lowest five-year TCO for 200, 1,500 and 10,000 endpoints. For on-premises UC deployments, ShoreTel has the lowest operational and implementation costs.
"What's important to highlight is that this research is based on what companies are actually spending on their solutions. Operational costs are the most important of all, and organisations using ShoreTel spend significantly less to operate their systems than those who use other providers," said Robin Gareiss, president of Nemertes Research.
"Based on the data, ShoreTel customers spend less initially and over time on their solutions. The IP Telephony and UC environments are changing rapidly and we recommend IT leaders negotiate hard, run cost models for five-years out, and pay particular attention to implementation and operations costs."