ShoreTel Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), today announced the results of an Aberdeen Group study on the total cost of ownership (TCO) of unified communications solutions. The survey of 236 different businesses validates that ShoreTel's unified communications solution is the easiest to use, deploy and manage when compared to other solutions on the market today.

Total cost of ownership is a key metric for assessing costs, benefits and risks of a UC solution - enabling organizations to properly evaluate competing solutions. It aligns their final decision with business needs, while understanding the effects of future requirements and functionalities.

ShoreTel Total Cost of Ownership

ShoreTel's UC solution was designed from the ground up to take advantage of IP technology - making it better suited to the realities of business than other "IP-enabled" legacy technology or bolted-together systems, which are inherently complex. The ShoreTel solution is based on a unique, open distributed architecture that integrates seamlessly with existing business applications and processes. Enterprises can scale with ease by simply plugging in an additional switch - without the need to rip and replace infrastructure. Moves, adds and changes (MACs) can easily be performed in-house because of the ability to manage users instead of devices, reducing the time, complexity and cost of system administration. These fundamental differences are what enable ShoreTel to provide the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry.

Specific examples of ShoreTel's ease of use and TCO advantage are highlighted in Aberdeen's study:

  • ShoreTel is the easiest to implement. ShoreTel customers experienced a 67 percent savings in internal implementation cost per phone when compared to Avaya Aura Communication Manager.
  • ShoreTel is the easiest to train and certify. Up-front training costs per administrator for ShoreTel systems were one-third the cost of training an administrator for a Cisco UCM solution. Ongoing annual training costs are 85 percent less than Avaya IP Office and 73 percent less than the average for all telephony.
  • ShoreTel is the most flexible. Performing moves, adds, and changes (MACs) on a ShoreTel system took one-third the time it takes to perform MACs on a Microsoft OCS/Lync system, and 60 percent less than the average for all telephony.
  • ShoreTel is the easiest and most cost-effective to manage. System management and administration of a ShoreTel system cost 42 percent less than Avaya Aura Communications Manager and 77 percent less than Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

When choosing a Unified Communications solution, enterprises must consider upfront capital costs, infrastructure and training costs, as well as network upgrades, system implementation, maintenance contracts and other factors. Aberdeen notes key insights for evaluating the total cost of ownership of a unified communications solution include:

  • Don't stop with maintenance and software assurance.
  • Understand the full cost of labor in managing Unified Communications.
  • Depreciate all potential operational costs over five to six years.

All costs were accounted for in the study including capital costs, operational costs, training costs, system administration costs, and ongoing support costs. The study focused on end users and their experiences with UC solutions from Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC, ShoreTel and legacy TDM systems. The survey results confirm that ShoreTel has the lowest TCO in the industry.

Read the full study at http://www.shoretel.com/resource_center/white_papers/TCO_Benchmarking_Study.html. Hyoun Park, Research Analyst from the Aberdeen Group, will present the results of the customer survey in a ShoreTel webinar on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. Sign up at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/113451674.

Quotes

"Total Cost of Ownership represents a holistic measure of the complete financial impact associated with the Unified Communications purchase decision and should be the most important issue for any IT financial stakeholder purchasing a new system. To uphold corporate fiscal and governance responsibilities, decision makers must fully examine all significant up-front and recurring costs to identify the UC solution offering the greatest value throughout the entire lifespan of the solution."

- Hyoun Park, Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group

"It's easy to say you have the lowest TCO in the industry, but this third-party research backs up what ShoreTel's customers have known for a long time. ShoreTel delivers the industry's lowest TCO because we designed complexity out and complexity is costly to the end-user. Our brilliantly simple approach to business communications removes the high operating costs and unnecessary complexity and this is fundamentally different from any other provider out there."

- Mark Arman, vice president of business development for ShoreTel

"Our network infrastructure is mostly Cisco, and while we considered demonstrations from four leading vendors, only ShoreTel was able to meet all of our requirements for cost, support, simplicity and integration. We had to do extensive cost justification for our executives who were familiar with Cisco, Avaya and Centrex, but not with ShoreTel. In the end, ShoreTel offered the very best total cost of ownership--by almost 10 percent--and had a simple straightforward architecture."

- Ann Roland, IT Manager, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency

"The costs to Hidalgo County for the phone system went down from about $900,000 a year in 2002, to about $400,000 a year since deployment in 2006. These massive savings are because now we can handle changes in-house, and make calls through the network using ShoreTel's least cost call routing feature, instead of having to go long distance across the county."

- Renán Ramirez, Chief Information Officer, Hidalgo County

"There is no question that the ShoreTel system provided a lower TCO. Not only did ShoreTel beat out all other solutions on a 5-year cost, but the simplicity of the administration further reduced the cost by allowing us to eliminate our outside Nortel consultant. We've also been able to recognize increased productivity through ShoreTel features that were extra cost items from other vendors and reduced carrier costs through the use of SIP trunks. And for the most important value benefit we have a lot of very happy users who feel they have a telephone system that provides them capabilities that were not previously available."

- Kevin J. Sullivan, Director of Technology, Cohen & Grigsby, P.C.

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About ShoreTel

ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHOR) is the provider of brilliantly simple Unified Communication (UC) solutions based on its award-winning IP business phone system. We offer organizations of all sizes integrated, voice, video, data, and mobile communications on an open, distributed IP architecture that helps significantly reduce the complexity and costs typically associated with other solutions. The feature-rich ShoreTel UC system offers the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) and the highest customer satisfaction in the industry, in part because it is easy to deploy, manage, scale and use. Increasingly, companies around the world are finding a competitive edge by replacing business-as-usual with new thinking, and choosing ShoreTel to handle their integrated business communication. ShoreTel is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has regional offices in Austin, Texas; United Kingdom; Sydney, Australia; and Singapore. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com.

Edelman
Jessica Ravenna, 650-762-2920
Jessica.Ravenna@Edelman.com