Introduction

To ensure that 500 continues to offer ‘best of breed’ we like to compare the products that we have to offer against other competitors.  We share this information with our clients and are happy to give prospective clients an insight into this analysis work.

We are currently featuring the analysis work that was done against ShoreTel.

ShoreTel…Are You Sure?

ShoreTel is a familiar name in the small (up to 100 seats) and medium (100 to 1000 seats) sized IP telephony market. Its products are aligned with the medium-sized market as competition increases for smaller sized SMEs. This competition is greater for two reasons. There is a greater number of other premises-based solution providers entering the market, and secondly, there are a plethora of off-premises hosted telephony solutions available.

ShoreTel is becoming increasingly aware that there are many ‘new boys on the block’ who claim to be able to deliver top-end open-standards telephony products. This, in turn, provides the SME market with greater choice and flexibility in the solutions they purchase with ever-increasing care.

Zultys may not have the brand awareness of ShoreTel, but this mature Silicon Valley company - founded in 2001 - can be considered to be the best kept secret in Europe. The universal selling proposition of Zultys is an all-in-one elegant solution. It requires no additional File Servers and packs more punch in its multiplatform desktop software (MAC, Linux and PC – Vista and XP). To that end, there are many features with both the Zultys and ShoreTel ‘boxes’ that a business would expect from an enterprise-grade, premises-based IP PBX system. These include hunt groups, ‘presence’, instant messaging, auto-attendant and tight integration and synchronisation with Microsoft Outlook / Exchange. Technically, both solutions offer feature-rich, easy to use end-user applications, are fail-safe and offer redundancy.

Preferred choice…Zultys

However, they do have several important differences too – and it is these distinctions that, in our view, make the Zultys premises-based solution a preferred choice to the ShoreTel offering. We believe that these differences require further examination and scrutiny by any potential client looking to purchase a premises-based IP telephony solution.

An immediate example and a key strength of the Zultys solution is the fact that the systems are based on the industry adopted open standard, SIP 2.0, whereas ShoreTel is not. Consider then that typically up to 75% of the cost of a new IP telephony system is associated with the telephone handsets themselves: purchasing a ShoreTel solution and then deciding to upgrade will mean that a business must continue to purchase dedicated ShoreTel handsets at the prices that ShoreTel set – or alternatively, dispose and write-off the cost. ShoreTel phones follow MGCP which is not an industry-adopted standard: most business grade Nokia mobile phones have a SIP client built in for example… but none have an in-built MGCP client, which we believe speaks for itself. Our solution uses SIP open standard telephones that support Polycom, Aastra and many other SIP-based phones. Now that another major player, Nortel, has filed for Chapter 11 protection – and if the industry-based journals are to be believed, they are not the only ones who’ll be doing this – should any of Nortel clients need to migrate their solution then they too will have to write off their proprietary handsets. Our solutions are different to ShoreTel and Nortel in this respect as we believe a clients’ investment should be afforded as much protection as possible. Choice is important both in itself but also to increase competition and so drive down capital expenditure.

ShoreTel is proud to promote their distributed architecture and it is indeed a unique selling point for them. It suggests that purchasing a number of ‘boxes’ will ensure less chance of failure. It depends how one looks at this of course: an alternative view is that an increased amount of equipment – especially if such equipment requires the use of Windows servers as some of ShoreTel’s add-ons do – could mean a greater expense and use greater rack space and power. It could easily be argued this approach presents multiple points of potential failure and a possible challenge in locating the point of failure within the network. Zultys utilises the robust Linux operating system on a single hardened and dedicated ’box’. In addition to the security and stability this provides, it also allows quick and simple backups and swift roll-backs (should they ever be required).

Here at 500 we only provide ‘best of breed’ products and solutions. We are not tied to any one manufacturer, product or service. After extensive research and testing, our decision to market a premises based solution, known as ‘500 Premises’, is currently based on the superior technology offered by our partners at Zultys.

We have created a table to compare and contrast some of the differences between the ShoreTel and Zultys systems. Please press the ‘Click here for in depth information’ bar below to view – and should you wish to discuss the pros and cons of the Zultys system further then please call us on 0845 0000 500.