ShoreTel guarantee of lowest TCO inspires confidence

Unified communications solution beats all comers by 50% to 75%

ShoreTel, a leading provider of pure IP-based unified communications solutions, is happy to prove that its fast-growing platform doesn’t just offer great value for money – in fact, it is sure its systems are the best value for money, bar none.

The company, represented in South Africa by Tellumat Telecoms, is offering a worldwide guarantee to new customers, that ShoreTel solutions offer the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) in the market.

Customers are invited to compare systems for themselves, using the vendor’s TCO analysis tool, which utilises independent third-party data from US research firm Nemertes Research and customer data, which they input themselves.

”Should another system outperform a comparable ShoreTel system, the vendor will match the lower price,” says Bennie Langenhoven, managing executive of Tellumat Telecoms. He notes that the guarantee applies to systems of 100 users and upwards.

Complexity is money

Langenhoven says ShoreTel owes its low TCO to one thing: simplicity of design. “ShoreTel’s IP phone solutions with integrated UC were purpose-built for IP networks, from the ground up,” he explains.

“The design principles are simplicity, robustness and power. As a result, ShoreTel solutions have little of the complexity or high maintenance and management costs that are typical of other solutions. As a result, dramatic savings have shown up in customers’ experiences as well as independent analyses.”

Independent TCO tool

ShoreTel’s comprehensive, fair and easy-to-use TCO tool analyses the business costs of UC systems over time for individual customers.

Going beyond simple comparisons of upfront acquisition costs (making up only 25% of TCO); the study compares ongoing costs such as hardware replacement, software upgrades, training, support, moves-adds-changes, system management and power consumption. (Such charges comprise as much as 75% of the cost of a solution over its life time.)

TCO calculations are based on a like-for-like configuration and feature set, over a five year period or more.

The results have been resoundingly in favour of ShoreTel, judging from the experience of analysts, customers and resellers.