(Editor's Note: This article refers to a video interview shot at Interop (News - Alert) 2010. To view TMCnet's entire library of videos from Interop and other industry shows, demonstrations and interviews in our in-house studio, visit our Video News home page.)

Recently at Interop 2010 in Las Vegas Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) sat down and interviewed Kevin Gavin, vice president of marketing at ShoreTel (News - Alert), who said that the company recently announced a total cost of ownership guarantee - "the lowest total cost of ownership."

For a long time, Gavin said, "we've known that the total cost of ownership of a PBX (News - Alert) turns out to be 25 percent up front costs and 75 percent ongoing management and maintenance costs."

He said they're learning "what IT executives are increasingly aware of, the fact that complexity costs money, and over time complex systems are harder to administer and require more staff, and end up costing an awful lot of money."

The right way to evaluate a PBX, or a business communication system, he said, was not just by the upfront costs, but the total cost of ownership over time. "So we've instituted a guaranteed lowest total cost of ownership because we're confident that the simplicity of the ShoreTel system costs significantly less to manage and administer over time."

When pressed on the specifics of the guarantee by Tehrani, Gavin explained that they've created an unlocked spreadsheet tool to help evaluate accurately the total cost over time. It takes into consideration maintenance, management, upgrades, "and other costs associated with it - power consumption as well as the upfront costs."

They then ask the customer to put in accurate data on ShoreTel's costs, and the competitor and their costs." He noted that they have "independent third-party research" which validates their assumptions, and says customers are welcome to change that based on other independent third-party research. The tool then calculates rates of return and the metrics the customer needs.