There are pluses and minuses to both systems. My experience suggests that ShoreTel handles call queues over remote links a bit better than Avaya (an extremely specific case in my opinion). Nice. But a real "whoopie doo" in the big scheme of things.

Now what about local wiring? Avaya will support digital sets over a single pair, while ShoreTel requires four pair for all stations (they strictly use IP phones).

Write up an ROI for the customer. Sooooo many business decisions are made by those in charge of the company money, which is why you should try to understand their priorities. It's not hard to create a spreadsheet that shows the relationship between (1) the basic system costs of the ShorTel system, PLUS the required recabling costs to support their POE phones versus the (2) raw equipment quotes from Avaya which DO NOT require that the existing cable be supplanted or otherwise replaced.

"Press play and record at the same time" -- Tim Alberstein