<<<... Most IP telephony vendors, including Avaya, Cisco and Nortel, offer branch-office products that aim to simplify operational start-up costs. Others, such as Mitel, NEC, ShoreTel and 3Com, focus on the SMB market, or companies with fewer than 1,000 end stations. Although they do serve larger roll-outs, their products are aimed at simplifying the initial IP-telephony deployment. Nemertes research has found that year over year, per-user operational costs have increased among all vendors for three reasons: Many organisations are hiring third-party providers to help with engineering or installation, which increases the operational costs.

The average size of the smaller roll-outs for at least two of the vendors (Nortel and ShoreTel) has decreased, resulting in a higher per-user cost. Many larger enterprises have started their VoIP projects within the past two years, and they are spending significant time up-front to launch large projects, but they cannot divide that time among the potential user base - again resulting in larger per-user costs. This affected most vendors, but Cisco and Nortel significantly. Organisations spend a median of $29,000 on consulting costs related to their VoIP implementation, an increase from last year's figure of $23,125. The range, however, is $500 to $2 million.

Capital start-up costs Overall, capital costs hovered close to the same figures as last year. Organisations spend $843 per user, on average, which includes the IP phones and an IP PBX. Like the operational start-up cost, the per-unit capital cost is higher for small roll-outs ($1,157) and lower for large roll-outs ($504). Companies spend an average of $309 on each IP phone. The range is $204 for Avaya to $392 for Nortel. The $416 figure for the "other" category in the graphic below is a compilation of figures from numerous IP-telephony vendors that didn't have enough statistical response to be counted individually. They include Alcatel, Siemens, NEC and 3Com. more>>>