I apologize for not having more time, perhaps to dig up some of my old data.  However the methodology went something like this.  Equipment + Install + Configuration + User time cost + Time cost for upgrades, maintenance, and expansion/changes.  Assuming you have an average size small business.  In that small business you have ~40 phones and 50 employees.  Each employee gets their own did.  ~5 phones are "executive" (fancier model) and you have two which are for receptions.  The receptions will monitor one of three "main" incoming lines and will need to know which one has been dialed before they answers.  Similarly you will need 3 different dial by name directories which may or may not have some overlapping people.  Each person needs to be able to switch between 3 preprogrammed settings on how their calls are handled. Integration with their business calendar so the phone system automatically switches between several settings depending on the individuals availability (in a meeting, out of office, etc.) is a big plus (ShoreTel does five settings as a base and was expandable but their was something about the expansion that I can not remember.

ShoreTel also did the integration with Outlook, Lotus, and a half dozen other applications calendars out of the box, but since they publish their API you could program your own if you wanted) The business has 10 remote sites to manage. 

About 10 users will require custom soft buttons. You hotel desks so that one physical phone may be used by several people during the course of a day so people need to be able to login and out of their phones easily. People also need to be able to quickly and easily record phone calls and manage those recordings. 

Voicemail must be integrated into email.  It also needs to be trivial for people to mange DND exception lists. 

And you need to assume you will change out about 15 employees a year.  You also require 10 departmental voice mail boxes that are integrated with a personas individual mail box for people who are authorized for that public box. In addition all equipment must be warranted for ten years. (etc. etc. etc.)  This is what I remember of the PBX requirements Cornerstone Homes had back in 2005.

 

Running this sort of system the cost of having some one set it all up, train local non-technical staff on how to maintain this, and provide support had a total cost of about $20,000 for equipment, install, and training.

In addition training cost was about 15 min per employee plus 45 min for the HR department who managed the systems operation.  I originally estimated this at about $2000 of cost for employee time. 

In addition I estimated and additional $2000/year of operational & maintenance cost.  

In fact cost less then $5 of my HR departments time to set up a new user and a new phone with custom soft buttons, voicemail, phone call handling (when should it ring, when should it roll to an assistant, when should it go to voice mail, which voicemail greeting should it give, etc), the companies directory, personal directory (usually integrated with their pim, but it could be via a text file too) and automatic updates (if using pim integration). 

Now the phone cost about $150, and with licensing and the estimated cost to house and maintain the equipment required for voicemail.  Of course both those costs are fairly typical when compared to Asterisk and are moot if just replacing an employee.  

Professional support was free for 2 years with 4 hour service guarantee and $6K per year their after, but no one I interviewed ever renewed support since the equipment had a lifetime guarantee and was so easy to set up and maintain. Professional support was $75/hour for remote support and $150/hour for on premises support up to 6K/year (at which point you purchased a support contract) if you needed it after your first two years was over. 

Equipment is warranted for life.  All upgrades, patches, etc. are also free and done by ShoreTel professionals.

I wish I had my information from when I was looking at Asterisks, but if I recall correctly, the numbers I got from the one asterisk vender came in at about $18,000 for equipment, install, and configuration.  No training and $150/hour for support; but the first 5 days of support was free.

They did not offer an inclusive support contract at the time.  While interviewing asterisks owners I got to an average estimation of about 20 hours a month by in house technical staff to support the users and maintain the system, plus about 100 hours of education per tech/year to keep the system updated, secure, and providing advancing service for the users.  So if you have two qualified people (so one can take a day off some time) then you are looking at about  440 hours.  Lets call it 400 hours or about $14,000/year of in house support cost.  Now this may seem like a large amount of time, however it was the average from the people I interviewed. Though I only included groups that had not had an outage in the last 2 years.  The cost per hour of telephone outage in the middle of a work day for my employer at the time was calculated to be approximately $10,000 and one call center I interviewed averaged 4 hours a year of outage; so I just tossed their estimation of maintenance time out.  Although it was really inside the range of others, but they were also a larger institution having about  200 phones attached to the system in three different call centers (funny thing is they shrank to less then 40 in three years, funny economy)

 

So, I have a two year cost of ShoreTel as $26K (actual cost was actually about $35K including the fax system, but we would have plugged that fax system into any phone system we would have purchased, save Avaya, which had their own fax system)

Estimated cost over two years for a Asterisks system was about $45K or almost twice the cost.  This is not to mention I could not find nearly the refinement of productivity tools or PIM integration.

 

What do you believe a modern cost of installing and maintaining this sort of system would be today for Asterisks?

 

I know, this is really short and not a full analysis, and I also understand the number of people supporting asterisks in the valley has increased so my numbers may be a bit off.

 

By the way, if you already have an experienced ShoreTel person on staff and purchased ShoreTel equipment off of eBay today from small and mid size companies that have not survived this economic downturn, then your looking at about $5K in equipment and licensing costs for the same install.