TMCnews Featured Article

ShoreTel, a provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), has launched an anti-complexity movement targeted at battling unnecessary and costly complexity in the IP Telephony industry. Moreover, the company attributed its increasing market share and industry accolades for its growing customer recognition that "complexity costs money."

In a stinging rebuke of the larger, entrenched IP telephony vendors, ShoreTel (News - Alert) denounced the common vendor practice of piecing together solutions from multiple proprietary technologies because these solutions end up costing customers more in the long run in the form of high costs for maintenance, upgrades, support and training. Rather than simplifying their solutions, these vendors seem to embrace complexity because it protects their position and helps guarantee a continuous revenue stream by making it harder for customers to break free from vendor lock in.

ShoreTel engineered a solution from the ground up that was optimized for IP-based communication and collaboration, and includes easy-to-use management and end-user features that fully integrate voice, video, data, and mobile communication. As a result of ShoreTel's efforts to eliminate complexity and thereby reduce costs, ShoreTel is able to offer a one-of-its-kind lowest total cost of ownership guarantee.

Some recent news highlights:

In a recent whitepaper titled "IT complexity: Danger or Opportunity," Roger Sessions calculates that each year the U.S. loses $1.3 trillion to IT failures. That equates to $500 billion per month lost to the US economy -- almost 9 percent of the U.S. GDP. Sessions says the culprit is almost certainly IT complexity.

ShoreTel continues to capture market share worldwide and in the U.S. for IP Telephony systems and IP Phones, according to the Synergy (News - Alert) worldwide and U.S. market share report for June 2010.

ShoreTel has received the highest overall score every year independent research firm, Nemertes Research, has evaluated IP Telephony.

A recent survey of IT professionals conducted by ShoreTel revealed that nearly 81 percent of respondents expressed a desire to simplify their communications system.

Many organizations now recognize that most major vendors have pieced unified communications systems together through acquisitions and add ons, and that this amalgamation increases complexity and drives up cost.

ShoreTel offers the lowest TCO in the industry and guarantees it, in large part because the system is easy to manage and use.

ShoreTel is upping the stakes in the battle for IP telephony mindshare and market share by building its advertising messaging around the call to beat complexity, and prompting businesses to ask, "When did complexity become the norm?" If other vendors take up this challenge, their customers will be the real beneficiaries.

Recently, ShoreTel was in news when the company announced the new Champion Partner Program to offer Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) solutions for business process integration.

Sujata Garud is a TMCnet freelancer with three years of writing/editing experience and two years of market research experience. As an editor she has covered the IT, electronics, banking, pharma, construction, mining and healthcare industries. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Ed Silverstein