Total Cost of Ownership - What are you REALLY paying for?

Purchasing a new phone system is like buying a new car. If you’re in the market for a new automobile, you’re not going to fork over money for the first piece of metal on wheels that you see. Chances are, you’ve researched the kind of car you want – the year, the make, the model, the engine power, etc. Then, when thinking about how much you’re going to spend on the car, you don’t think of how much just the car itself will cost. Other factors come in to play financially – the interior of the car (do you want leather or cloth?), the built-in amenities (do you want a car that’s OnStar-ready, or one with hands-free, Bluetooth capabilities?), the type of tires the car needs, the oil that goes in it, the type of gas it needs (regular, premium, or diesel?), and, most importantly, how much car insurance will cost with your new purchase.

If you’re an IT director at a company in need of a new phone system, you’re probably shopping for handsets and network providers in the same way. You’re going to look at different vendors and providers that match your company’s needs to the products available from these suppliers. You’ll look at the pricing of the products and services and compare them to what your company’s budget can afford. But one of the main things you should be wary of when shopping for a new phone system is the total cost of ownership (TCO), especially with an economy that’s seen brighter days.

Considering the financial landscape of the last four years, IT spending may not be at the forefront of many CIOs’ agendas. However, according to an article on CIO.com, a survey conducted by CDW IT Monitor revealed that there is an uptick in economic confidence with increasing IT budgets.

“CIOs are looking at every IT investment in terms of how it makes sense for the business and our data shows they are still spending on key investments including software and hardware – particularly mobile devices, virtualization and security... The investments that are being planned by CIOs for late this year reflect a decided shift to software installations – at a level that CDW calls the greatest on record, and covering a significant part of their organizations.”

With the shift of budget focus to software installations that allow for mobility, virtualization and security, analyzing the overall TCO of a purchase from a vendor is incredibly important.

Last month, ShoreTel revealed results from a comprehensive industry study from Aberdeen Group that showed ShoreTel Unified Communications solution as having the lowest TCO in the telecommunications industry.

"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 in the market today…

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… Enterprises can scale with ease by simply plugging in an addition 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.”

When considering a phone system, measuring the TCO requires planning for the future. Important things to consider outside of the hardware itself are installation and implementation (ensuring proper cabling and a service provider that is compatible with your phone system), maintenance costs (in a perfect world, the only time an organization would need a new phone system would be for an upgrade to keep “with the times”… but it’s not a perfect world, and things break, wear out, and stop working), additional application add-ons and their compatibility with the phone system (like we’ve mentioned before, mobility and BYOD are increasingly being adopted by businesses to expand their efficiency and cut costs), training (let’s face it – new technology, especially conference-capable technology, can be confusing and hard to learn on your own), and licensing.

Upfront training cost for new Deployments from Aberdeen study.

The survey also revealed that ShoreTel IP phone deployment took only 53 minutes to complete as compared to Avaya Aura, which took more than 2.5 hours for each phone, and the cost for recurring training for a ShoreTel system was 85 percent less than the recurring training cost for an Avaya IP Office system.

At Maverick Networks, Inc., we partner with companies like ShoreTel to ensure that our customers and clients are getting the most for their money. We offer the best products at competitive prices because we know that it’s the quality of the products and services that matter the most in the long-term when it comes to IT spending.

For more information on what we offer, or to get a quote for your company’s UC needs, visit our website or contact us at info@mavericknetworks.net

"Resolving" business communications

It’s the beginning of a new year, which means it’s time to work on those New Years resolutions. Maverick Networks might be able to help.

While we can’t promise to help you to lose weight or trim off bad habits, we can help your business become more efficient, save money, retain employees (even those at a distance) and decrease its carbon footprint by employing unified communications within your company.

Need a better understanding of what unified communications means? We can help with that, too.

Unified communications (UC) is the convergence of real-time communications services (such as instant messaging, video conferencing, data sharing, etc.) with non-real-time communication services (such as e-mail, SMS and fax). It allows users to send a message from one medium and receive the same message through another medium over Internet protocol (IP), often at a much faster speed than through the public switched telephone networks traditionally used.

For example, Jack leaves a voicemail for Jill. Jill, however, is in an important business meeting and cannot pick up her phone to listen to the voicemail. Instead, Jill can open her e-mail from her smartphone or tablet and be able to read the message that Jack has left. If Jill wants to respond, she can write her response via e-mail to Jack, who can receive the message through his e-mail inbox, or listen to it from his voicemail.

Sounds pretty cool and technological, right? We think so, which is why we’re so passionate about what we sell.

We know that when a company employs UC within their workplace, their work efficiency increases. People no longer have to wait around for important responses, which can delay progress, and employees can all be better connected around the clock.

While our country is slowly but surely climbing out of a recession, cutting costs is still crucial to keep a company afloat. But, instead of having to decrease workforce because of lack of space or lack of resources, businesses can use converged communication technology to keep employees even more in touch than ever, even if they’re working from home or out of other, more distant offices.

Another perk of utilizing UC? Travel time and commuting expenses are cut, which not only helps businesses to save time and money, it also contributes to keeping their CO2 emissions down. Services like video conferencing over IP can allow Jack, who is located in Portland, to meet with Jill, who is located in Los Angeles, without having to leave the office.

Through mobility-enabled UC services, users can have phone calls seamlessly rerouted from their office phone to their own mobile device, for any important calls that may come in while that person is in the field or in transit. Users can even make calls from their mobile device under their office number (known as single number reachability), so their personal number doesn’t have to be revealed (or, even cooler, the person on the other end of the line doesn’t have to know that the user isn’t at his or her desk).

So, even if you end up dropping your personal New Years resolutions by Valentine’s Day, through unified communications, you can ensure that your business’s “resolutions” can remain fulfilled for years to come.