Resources from Unified Communications

ShoreTel Delivers Lowest Total Cost of Operations for UC&C and Telephony

By Michael Guta
Contributing Writer

The right unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) solution gets rid of the complexities of effective communication for administrators and both end users. This means, organizations will be able to integrate smartphones, tablets, wearables and more with minimal configuration and maximum flexibility. ShoreTel, provider of UC products, cloud services and IP phone systems, was recognized by the annual Nemertes Research study as having the lowest total cost of operations for UC&C and IP telephony for both cloud and on-premises across all sized deployments.

ShoreTel (News - Alert)'s UC&C and IP telephony solutions allow businesses and their employees to communicate and collaborate anytime, anywhere and on any device with minimal demand on IT resources.

The number of organizations managing their own communications system with on premises hardware deployments is rapidly decreasing. The total cost of ownership (TCO), along with the capital and operational expenditure, no longer makes financial or operational sense compared to the hosted services companies such as ShorTel provide.

In highlighting how much the TCO of communications platforms cost organizations to operate – even cloud and hybrid architectures – Nemertes has chosen to call TCO “total cost of operations” instead of “total cost of ownership.” This highlights an important point about hosted services, because not all service providers save their customers money when it comes to migrating from on premises systems.

Nemertes reached the decision by comparing costs that are based on real-world capital, implementation and operational costs – not list pricing – from IT professionals responsible for the systems, this according to Robin Gareiss, president of Nemertes Research.

Gareiss goes on to say, “Those who use ShoreTel devote fewer IT staff members to managing the solution and relationship than did those using competitors. It is primarily those ongoing operational costs that keep ShoreTel lower to operate than competitors. For cloud and hybrid, we found ShoreTel's actual subscription costs are lower than competitors, so over a five-year period the savings add up – often significantly.”

The study was conducted by surveying 300 companies and analyzing their real-world cost data, including capital, implementation and ongoing operational costs. This, as Gareiss said, makes all the difference in the world when service providers are compared beyond the low initial acquisition costs, because once it is purchased, implementation and ongoing costs can quickly erase the price differential.

Companies with 100, 750 and 1,500 employees were evaluated with different scenarios and service providers that included 8x8, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya (News - Alert), Cisco, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC and Vonage. Compared to the industry average, as well as providers for both on premises and cloud, ShoreTel delivered the better value in each instance with the greatest costs savings and lowest overall cost over a five-year period.

“ShoreTel is proud to be lowest in total cost of operations, reflecting what our customers have been experiencing all along – that ShoreTel delivers substantial savings along with fully-featured, reliable communication solutions that improve productivity and collaboration no matter whether they are onsite, in the cloud or a hybrid mix of the two,” said Mark Roberts (News - Alert), CMO at ShoreTel.