Unified communications specialist ShoreTel has been named in a new study as offering the best value for money in terms of total operations costs across all comms platforms.
According to the survey by Nemertes Research, which focused on real-world costs over a five-year period, both ShoreTel’s cloud and on-site offerings ranked lowest overall in terms of investment required to set up and maintain their systems.
The idea of the study was to combine capital, set-up and ongoing running costs for a full range of telecoms products to find out which offered the best value in real terms. Hidden costs, particularly in set up and maintenance, often distort the headline figures of advertised contract rates.
Looking at products and services from more than 300 companies, and covering VoIP, UC and collaborative comms as well as cloud and on-premises, the survey considered the cost scenarios for businesses of 200, 750 and 1500 employees running each product for a period of five years.
ShoreTel, which offers the Connect CLOUD and Connect ONSITE suites, was found to have lower subscription costs than most of its competitors, adding up to a significant savings over a five-year period. It was also found to have lower operational costs in general, with customers having to allocate fewer staff and resources to managing the systems and the contracts.
ShoreTel CMO Mark Roberts said:
“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”.
