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Given the size and scope of the investment, not to mention how crucial telephony is to almost every business, IP telephony (IPT) vendor evaluation has to remain objective and focused on key differentiators. These include the vendor’s overall collaboration portfolio, its ability to integrate with the existing IT infrastructure and applications, and its track record in similar customer environments. This storyboard will help you:
- Understand the IPT market.
- Evaluate leading IPT vendors.
- Select the best fit vendor.
Get to the right decision and show transparency by applying a consistent IPT vendor scoring and ranking methodology.
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2 Comments
Interesting that you rank ShoreTel 'poor' on affordability and Cisco as 'good'. ShoreTel really plays up their value proposition in their marketing, and I've heard from ShoreTel integrators that they routinely beat Cisco on price. How did you gather/analyse data in this area?
Thanks for your comment, Mark. We built a scenario, seen in the Storyboard Appendix on slide 30, and asked the vendors to provide list pricing for the scenario including three years of support. We took the cost provided and ranked each provider’s cost against each other, building out a relative cost rating. In this instance, ShoreTel happened to cost more than Cisco using list pricing.
You may be able to get lower costs depending on the specific requirements for (and architecture of) your VOIP implementation, and the reseller you engage during an RFP/RFI process, but that is highly dependent on the size of the deal, which reseller is involved, the discount level provided by the vendor to the reseller, and several other factors. In addition, as the pricing scenario only includes initial acquisition and three-year support costs, the implementation and operating costs for different vendors’ solutions (and thus the associated TCO over three years) can vary significantly.