Six weeks ago, pure IP unified communications systems vendor ShoreTel bragged about winning a unified communications deal from competitors at AT&T Park - the home of the San Francisco Giants.
Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle revealed the competitor was Cisco and that the deal was worth $1 million.
The Giants partnered with ShoreTel to roll out a new Voice over IP (VoIP) unified communications system that included a total of 450 ShoreTel IP Telephones. The Giants also purchased the ShoreTel Converged Conference solution as well as the ShoreWare Contact Center application Workgroup, for its ticketing, sales and customer service contact center.
According to San Francisco Giants CIO - Bill Schlough:
"The Giants were seeking a state-of-the-art communications system that would transform the way our front office staff, the media, and our fans connect at AT&T Park, and we were very excited to find that a local leader in IP-based communications offered an outstanding solution coupled with the best customer service in the industry. The ShoreTel system will help us all communicate more efficiently, provide enhanced capabilities for our staff and luxury suite patrons, and ensure the safety of our fans. On top of all that, the system will save us hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. ShoreTel has hit a grand slam for the Giants."
"We love to do demos against Cisco," said ShoreTel Chief Financial Officer - Mike Healy.
"We can't overtake Cisco, but we're aiming to be No. 2," Healy added.
The SF Chronicle article continued that ShoreTel has also installed similar systems for the Verizon Center - home of the NBA's Washington Wizards, and other sports venues, including HSBC Arena - home of the NHL's Buffalo Sabres and NASCAR's Infineon Raceway.
Why do you think Cisco lost a $1 million UC deal to ShoreTel?
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Could be anything
Really this could be any of a number of things. ShoreTel might have been the cheapest solution, maybe Cisco wasn't interested in becoming a corporate sponsor of the Giants like ShoreTel was.
Really though - other than the fact that it as in San Francisco wheres the draw for this article? Is this column going to cover every 500 handset deal that goes down - or just the ones that don't go Cisco?
Glad you believe $1 million not a big deal
Glad you believe $1 million is not a big deal.
Just wondering...
Is it possible The San Francisco Giants as well as AT&T Park felt that same condescending attitude from Cisco itself during the bid process?
Pehaps most telling is the comment made by San Francisco Giants CIO - Bill Schlough regarding his choice of ShorTel over Cisco:
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished
Easy Answer!
I wouldn't dig too deep into this when the answer is fairly obvious: ShoreTel offers a much better solution. Ask any customer or partner who has installed both products and this is the simple answer that you will get. Does Cisco make some great products? You bet. Is UC one of their great products? No.
Cisco absolutely was interested in being a corporate sponsor of the park - have you ever seen them miss an opportunity to put up their logo? Branding is what they do best.
Who called this one?
I remember talking about the pricing of the Cisco UC and UC520 systems, how they were getting beat on price. This just proves that they need to come down on price with systems and really the phones. The phones are over priced as customer say. The customer went with the lowest price as they should, that why they are losing deals to them.
Cisco pricing
Cisco is a very good solution but really they need to do something about their pricing. We get clients we do POCs for on Cisco and they see the value of Cisco over other vendor solutions but when it comes to pricing they turn the deal down....if only Cisco could get more competitive with its pricing they would sure be the market leaders taking position 1,2 and 3..
I wonder what Cisco's excuse will be on this one?
Maybe that the marketing MBA's at Cisco could not sell any Kool-Aid to Bill? Maybe if Cisco would just make their GUI as easy to use as ShoreTel they could sell some more. Need to be able to to use it and not have a CCIE to do so.
AIM HIGH SHORETEL!
Way to be content as the first loser
Disagree
Disagree, beating Cisco is all about NOT being a loser!
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished
Personal Opinion
I feel certain your openly hostile comments towards this company aren't impacting your journalistic integrity.
Journalistic integrity?
I've never been accused of having journalistic integrity before!
But if you too seek to ruin my readers' opinion of me, you'll need to grab a ticket and get in line with the others and wait for your number to be called.
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished
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