ShoreTel goes big in hosted VoIP: A Q&A with CEO Blackmore

02.10.2012

Well, if you look at the competitors to M5, you don't have the normal names we associate with the premise. For example, we don't see and we don't see Avaya. There are smaller player and most of them have been in business for 10 years. So that was my point about when the market starts really taking off, you need to get in at the right time. We think the timing is right.

How many customers do you have on the hosted side now?

About 3,000. The average number of seats is 40.

So the typical hosted user is a smaller shop. Do you see that changing over time?

It's interesting. When we were negotiating with M5 their average seat size was 30. It's now 40, so it's increasing. Our biggest customer is a human resources search agency and they've got 2,000 seats. There's no glass ceiling here. You can have bigger and bigger customers. The profile is steadily increasing, and that's why we think the M5 market is more interesting than competitors such as 8x8 and RingCentral, who have less than 10 seats on average. We're at the 40 level and it's a business customer with lower churn, higher ARPU, so we think it's the right place to be.