November 17, 2004

Survey also finds that ShoreTel and Nortel offer the lowest start-up costs, while Avaya and Cisco prices were the highest.

By Matthew Friedman Networking Pipeline

A new study has found that it costs an enterprise between $525 and $1,512 per user to implement VoIP, but the eventual savings can be substantial, ranging between $9,600 and $28,000 per site annually for large enterprises. The study also found that ShoreTel and Nortel offered the least-expensive start-up costs, while Avaya and Cisco prices were the highest.

The study, "Convergence: Reality at Last," by Nemertes Research, asserts that startup costs are dependent on a number of variables, include enterprise size and which vendor companies chose to supply the VoIP solution. It found that size does matter, and that the average initial cost of a VoIP deployment, including hardware such as IP PBXs and handsets as well as planning an implementation services, was $525 per user in deployments of 1000 users or more, and $763 in deployments of 100 users and less.

ShoreTel and Nortel offered the least-expensive start-up costs, while Avaya and Cisco prices were the highest. On average, according to Nemertes, companies spend $17,220 on network assessments, to determine whether their existing data networks are ready to carry voice traffic.

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