ShoreTel | Blog

ShoreTel defines UC: brilliant simplicity

2009-06-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP Marketing

Any conversation about the future of communications has to include a discussion about unified communications (UC). Surprisingly, although a growing number of companies are now experiencing the productivity and connectivity gains achievable from UC deployments, the industry itself still seems to be conflicted as to what UC actually means.

Undoubtedly, UC today features many different forms of communications—including voice, video, instant messaging—and powerful applications that extend beyond the telephone to break down communication barriers and help people connect and access the information they need as quickly and as easily as possible.

And therein lies ShoreTel’s definition of UC: brilliantly simple solutions designed to help people communicate anywhere, any time and in any way they choose.

For a UC solution to follow through on its promises of productivity gains, reduced costs and improved collaboration, it has to be simple to deploy, simple to maintain and simple to use. Introducing complexity into the network only requires more sleepness nights from overstretched IT folks, puts additional strain on already tight budgets, and increases the risk of unplanned downtime.

Complexity and clunkiness also increase the likelihood that end users won’t take advantage of the feature-rich collaboration tools, mobility features and workflow applications that hold the keys to a rapid ROI, improved customer service and productivity boosts.

At the same time, these applications and tools must be easily customized to the individual business environment—rather than the other way around. Businesses need the flexibility to respond to market shifts and challenges quickly and cost-effectively. We witnessed this recently as the economic downturn led to a huge reduction in business travel, and an increase in online conferencing.

As a result, today’s UC solutions must offer business agility through ease of interoperability and integration, and eliminate the traditional risks of locking in on proprietary systems with roadmaps to obsolescence.

Since ShoreTel was designed from the ground up for IP networks, we’ve been able to focus on an approach that optimizes the potential of IP, including newer technologies such as session initiation protocol (SIP), and delivers UC solutions that anyone can use. Not only do our simply brilliant solutions take communications to a whole new level of ubiquity, but they give businesses the freedom to innovate in which ever direction they choose.

And for the majority of cash-strapped, competitive businesses today, any other definition of UC is completely irrelevant.

ShoreTel’s Brilliant Simplicity Rocks Colorado

2009-06-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Robert Clarke, Area Manager, Rockies

One of the biggest challenges government faces today is how to expand information-sharing and services for constituents within a system that is built on transparency, public participation, and collaboration.

Opening lines of communication continues to be a priority for cities, states and agencies throughout the country. However, government offices and agencies also face the same challenge as businesses: how to do more with less.

For the City of Lakewood in Colorado, this meant replacing a 22-year-old phone system that was increasingly dropping calls, causing costly, time-consuming and embarrassing fire drills, and that at the end of the day offered limited features to the two dozen or so offices across the city. And this needed to be completed within budget, on schedule and under close taxpayer scrutiny.

After a comprehensive and meticulous evaluation process, and a pilot system that took less than a day to set up and learn, the City of Lakewood team chose ShoreTel.

With more than 1,000 ShorePhone IP Telephones across the city, lines of communication have never been more open—from recreation centers, public works and other departments that can handle more calls faster to hotlines that give out advice to citizens during snowstorms and other emergency events.

In fact, the City of Lakewood IT team is so impressed with the capabilities and ease of management of the ShoreTel UC system that representatives recently spoke at a seminar offered by ShoreTel partner OCx.

At the seminar, staff from school districts, city governments and public health departments from up to 300 miles away gathered to hear how the reliability, brilliant simplicity and low total cost of ownership of the ShoreTel system is helping the City of Lakewood leap mountains.

Read the full City of Lakewood success story to find out more.

ShoreTel: Conceived in an IP world

2009-06-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Erik Linask of TMCnet at Interop to discuss how ShoreTel has simplified the deployment, management and use of UC solutions to offer organizations of all sizes and across all sectors, the capabilities, performance and TCO they need to compete in today’s business environment.

ShoreTel has been able to achieve this feature-rich set of advanced UC capabilities combined with brilliantly simple management ease because we took a unique approach to our architecture right at the beginning. Unlike many of our competitors, who were saddled with legacy TDM designs when the IP world took off, ShoreTel started with a blank slate and designed a fully distributed, IP-based architecture built with five-nines availability, low TCO, management ease and effortless scalability.

Since then, we’ve been able to take that single-image, distributed platform to the next step, and open up our interface to integrate with third party UC application vendors, such as Microsoft and IBM.

For more information on how ShoreTel’s brilliantly simple UC solutions can meet your current business needs, contact a ShoreTel partner or see a ShoreTel demo, and decide for yourself.

UC the ShoreTel Way – Brilliantly Simple

2009-05-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Jeff Ridley, Director of Product Management

As the ShoreTel booth continues to steal the show and draw massive crowds here at Interop, one of the most pressing questions on everyone’s lips is, how does ShoreTel define unified communications?

The answer is simple. Brilliantly simple.

In my presentation for the Interop Education Program on Tuesday, entitled Unified Communications in Two Simple Steps, I described how the brilliant simplicity of ShoreTel’s distributed single solution for telephony and applications delivers a rock solid platform for reliable, uniform services throughout the network.

With just one system to manage, regardless of the number of locations, N+1 redundancy for mission-critical reliability, and end-user communication tools that anyone can quickly learn, ShoreTel makes the first step toward UC an easy move.

The next step is all about improving business communications and processes, without introducing resource-intensive complexity. With ShoreTel, integrating UC applications that solve business challenges, improve response times, boost productivity and deliver a rapid ROI is easy.

The ShoreTel UC system seamlessly integrates the UC features and applications businesses need today, including presence information, instant messaging, video, real-time alerts, mobility, remote capabilities, collaboration tools, and business application integration, on a platform designed for tomorrow’s growth. And with the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry, we have the tools to show you how our ease of management and use can reduce your costs and free up valuable resources.

If you missed today’s session and are interested in learning more about how to make the move to UC as easy and as rewarding as possible, download our free Network Readiness white paper, and contact your local ShoreTel partner.

And remember, two simple steps. One brilliantly simple solution.

Go Your Own Way With ShoreTel at Interop

2009-05-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Gina Jacobs, Sr. Director of Marketing Communications

As Interop 2009 Las Vegas gets underway, ShoreTel is set to show participants how they can go their own way, with live demonstrations of our latest integration capabilities, mobility and personalization features, built-in reliability and industry-leading ease of use.

As organizations increasingly recognize the costs savings and productivity boosts possible through unified communications, many also are concerned about the risks of locking into proprietary systems, using nascent technologies and adding complexity to the network.

ShoreTel lets you explore new ways to differentiate your business through IP-based communications that are based on open standards for flexibility, that are proven to work by thousands of ShoreTel raving fans, and that offer a wide range of applications—from plug-and- play solutions to custom packages created to meet specific business needs—all based on our brilliantly simple architecture.

At this year’s Interop, we’re showing how organizations can help employees become more productive and collaborate more effectively with UC client applications that are extremely easy to use, and with UC capabilities that can be delivered via the applications employees are already using and feel comfortable with – IBM Lotus Sametime 8.0 and Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 Release 2. This freedom means organizations can finally do UC the right way.

To see how far your business can go with ShoreTel, stop by booth 1643 at Interop Las Vegas, May 19-21, in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Not going to Interop? Sign up today for a free demonstration.

ShoreTel gives IP phones a new lease of life

2009-05-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Dieter Rencken, Senior Product Manager

As IP networks continue to evolve, and advanced IP-based communications devices such as softphones and smartphones align more closely with today’s business needs, many IT experts are beginning to wonder what role, if any, the desktop IP phone will play moving forward. In his recent article, Whose Fault is The IP Phone? Eric Krapf candidly raises the question, “What does an IP phone really give you?”

While mobile phones offer the flexibility of anytime, anywhere communication, and softphones combine performance with application integration, ShoreTel IP Telephones, also easily integrate with unified communications applications, to offer ease of use, high quality calls and improved productivity. In short, the ShoreTel IP Telephone gives organizations the ability to choose the best means of communication for their employees.

With so many options available, businesses must weigh their users’ needs and workplace environment before selecting their next generation phones. For many businesses, giving every employee a mobile phone is not practical, and PCs with a softphone solution do not always offer the levels of reliability required for many business environments.

The ShoreTel IP Telephone serves as the go-to communication tool, and offers industry leading reliability, and voice quality—ask anyone who’s ever had poor mobile phone coverage how easy it is to conduct business when every other word drops. And with ShoreTel, users have the freedom to use the communication tool that is most familiar to them and best fits their job, without having to learn a new application, interface or device.

One final important feature is the overall look and feel of the work phone. As Mr Krapf notes, ShoreTel charged its design team with developing an IP telephone that was not only aesthetically pleasing, but ergonomically adapted to the physical workplace. If features are not intuitive, users will not take the time to learn them, and so the enhanced capabilities that IP phones offer, compared to legacy TDM, may well go underutilized.

As a result of our painstaking design process, ShoreTel's phones are ergonomic, intuitive and easy to use. Add in comfort, convenience, presence location, integrated applications, reliability and ROI, and ShorePhone IP Telephones just keep on giving.

Maintaining Workforce Resources

2009-05-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Vasili Triant, Managing Director, Southeast Asia

We all know that reducing costs and overhead is usually the first response of a business facing a contracting market. We’ve seen it firsthand. But cost-cutting is never simple, and organizations must understand how to trim costs while maintaining a competitive edge, and staying agile enough to take advantage of the market once it begins to bounce back.

Businesses that understand this positioning know that slashing costs in some areas doesn’t mean you stop investing in others. Success comes from identifying the areas that generate the greatest results, and making decisions on how they can be supported and enhanced to generate even stronger returns.

Cutbacks and investments should go hand in hand. It is a timely reminder of the 80/20 rule: 20 percent of your operations produce 80 percent of your results. Inevitably this 20 percent involves your people and the way they work with customers.

Staying close to customers is critical in all operating climates. It becomes even more important when conditions are tough. Maintaining and improving customer relationships increases customer loyalty and creates opportunities for new and repeat orders. It also makes it harder for competitors to get a foot in the door.

These same rules apply to your workforce. Equipping people with the resources they need to improve the way they communicate and stay close to customers helps improve productivity and create opportunities. It also helps boost morale and improve retention in an up-market.

The ShoreTel team understands the business needs of today’s global marketplace, and included key enhancements in ShoreTel 9 that enable mobile and desktop users to stay better informed about the needs of customers and colleagues. This upgrade to our award-winning software – provided free to existing licence holders – provides users with highly personalised and highly efficient unified communications resources that transform the way they work and help them do more without compromising business agility.

When a business’s productivity rate is high, success continues to follow. Business investments that produce real returns are vital to this success, and postponing them until conditions improve carries significant risk. Making a positive decision in this area can help turn a business around – I’ve witnessed it on many occasions. And in my experience, proactively investing wisely can be more important than reactively making cuts to your balance sheet.

San Francisco Giants Hit a Homerun with ShoreTel VoIP

2009-05-11T12:28:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

When the New York Giants moved to San Francisco in 1957, fans at Seals Stadium welcomed them with roaring cheers and open arms. At that time, Seals Stadium employees communicated with each other and players – the likes of Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda – with the now antiquated rotary style phones. More than 50 years have passed since the Giants’ move, and a lot has changed in the arena of communications. Today, the Giants’ are using ShoreTel’s Pure-IP business phone system with unified communications to slide into modern times.

More than 450 ShoreTel IP Telephones will be deployed throughout the ballpark and other off-site facilities, including the Giants’ Scottsdale, Arizona stadium. The Giants also selected the ShoreTel Converged Conference solution and ShoreTel’s unique Web Dialer application to augment the system, plus they’ll be using the ShoreWare Contact Center application Workgroup for ticketing, sales and customer service contact center. All of these features, and more, will help streamline communications and reduce costs.

The Giants are also taking advantage of another very important feature that is increasingly popular among many other public-servicing facilities and centers: All park guests will benefit from improved emergency response thanks to ShoreTel's E911 Integration Application. This public safety feature pinpoints the location of calls from a ShoreTel phone anywhere in the ballpark, and automatically informs all designated security staff and emergency responders.

The SF Giants are committed to making AT&T Park the "greenest" ballpark in the country by making environmental stewardship a top priority. To that end, the ShoreTel UC system helps achieve that goal with equipment that has been independently tested by The Tolly Group to show energy savings of up to 62 percent for a deployment of this size, compared with Cisco.

The ShoreTel team is looking forward to being at the park tonight, and hosting a behind-the-scenes look at some of the latest unified communications technology with leading analysts and members of the press. We’re also hoping to see Randy Johnson win his 298th game!

For more information on ShoreTel’s latest home run and more, visit our press release room

No Title

2009-04-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Vasili Triant, Managing Director, Southeast Asia

Working in a variety of countries and now in my new post in Australia, I can safely say that there are some definite trends to be seen across markets. Businesses worldwide warm to solutions that provide the kind of value they can touch and feel. So a solution that demonstrates increased workforce productivity by integrating IP voice and collaboration resources into a UC system at low OPEX makes sense.

Since our first installation in 1998, ShoreTel has maintained a deeply held conviction that our IP-based voice solutions can provide businesses with a tangible way to improve productivity at the lowest overall total cost of ownership in the industry.

The global marketplace continues to warm to this view. UC adoption rates in Australia will grow this year at a rate of 13 percent, according to a recent study by analyst firm IDC. Even stronger growth is expected in certain sectors, including education, health and government, as well as retail/wholesale sectors, where UC adoption in 2009 is forecast to grow by 22 percent. For most businesses in Australia it is a case of when UC will be adopted, not if.

It is a similar growth story in New Zealand where we recently signed an agreement with Communications Exchange to serve as our second national distributor alongside longtime partner, Connector Systems. This development expands our footprint in New Zealand and opens up opportunities for our market-leading technology.

ShoreTel continues to gain incredible support from its partners. We believe the expertise and experience of value-add distributors and resellers is critical in delivering telephony solutions that best meet the needs of customers. As a result, ShoreTel only selects partners that share our commitment to delivering the best customer experience with UC, and who demonstrate an ability to support our aggressive growth targets. We recognise that these partners provide their customers with a surety on service and value. ShoreTel believes these relationships are paramount.

ShoreTel Helps Flexible Working Work for You

2009-04-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Tom Perry, Director of Marketing, EMEA

The recent introduction of flexible working legislation in the UK is challenging businesses of all sizes to take a fresh look at the processes and systems they have in place as they implement plans to meet potential employee demands. Flexible working is a catch-all term to describe any working pattern that is adapted to suit the needs of the employee. Common types of flexible working include part-time or flexi-time working through annualised, compressed or staggered hours, job sharing, or homeworking.

The need to support the efficient operations of a flexible workforce represents real challenges to IT departments. When earlier flexible working legislation came into effect in 2003, a survey commissioned by workplace flexibility specialists John Blackwell Associates Ltd (JBA) found that one third of companies experienced unsustainable costs from making requisite changes to working procedures, and an overwhelming amount of respondents (78 percent) anticipated significant forthcoming expenditures, particularly in the area of information and communications technology, to support flexible workplace practices.

At the same time, industry experts are also pointing to the advantages of a flexible workforce in today’s mobile society. Not only can businesses take advantage of workers with particular skills and expertise in different regions, but the ability to work flexible hours can help improve employee morale, resulting in a reduction of staff turnover, absenteeism and overtime. Many businesses are also embracing flexible working hours as part of a broader green initiative, since homeworking can reduce office space requirement, and commuter congestion. Clearly then, it is imperative that businesses realize these benefits and meet the legislative requirements without compromising productivity.

As UK businesses react to the implications of this legislation, there are lessons they can learn from companies in Europe who are already embracing flexible working practices. ShoreTel’s customers such as the Belgian document outsourcing company Speos have already benefited from reduced costs, improved efficiency and flexibility offered by pure VoIP telephony. Speos has deployed ShoreTel’s UC system to facilitate flexible working spaces as calls are efficiently routed to employees regardless of location. Speos also eliminated a significant proportion of communications costs as calls are now made via a data link.

Based on the real world experiences of organisations that have already deployed unified communications (UC), it is clear that UC is ideal for bridging geographic divides effectively with a single image IP-based communications system. The simple deployment and centralised Web browser-based management, combined with the user productivity gains from being able to manage your own communications profile, takes flexible working to a new level.

From flexibility in work/life balance to flexibility in how businesses and employees communicate, ‘flexible working’ must be a core value of every competitive and successful business.

ShoreTel Answers the Question of Success

2009-04-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

When San Francisco Chronicle reporter David R Baker sat down and interviewed ShoreTel CEO John Combs recently, there were a lot of pressing questions he could have asked. He could have asked about the ongoing evolution of ShoreTel’s unified communications technology as it pushes the envelop in business process integration to transform the way people work.

He could have asked about ShoreTel’s unique switched-based architecture and its industry-leading reliability and ease of use. He could have asked about ShoreTel’s low total cost of ownership and what that means to companies looking to replace or augment their phone systems.

He might even have asked how John’s passion for running helps him maintain focus and keep in shape for managing an innovative, and agile young business in an industry dominated by monolithic giants.

But in the current economic climate, the main question on everyone’s mind is how. How in a down economy does a company make the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Chron 200” list, right on the heels of garnering a spot on San Jose Mercury News’ “Silicon Valley 150” list? How does a company not only convince potential customers to buy, but turn satisfied customers into raving fans? And how does a company successfully position itself for growth once the economic storm passes?

From where I sit, the answer is clear. Leadership. ShoreTel’s success is a testament to John’s leadership and his focus on driving the company to create great products and maintain our intense focus on customer satisfaction.

ShoreTel puts the Ease in Green for Environmentally Conscious Organizations

2009-04-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Gina Jacobs, Sr. Director of Marketing Communications

First and foremost, I’d like to wish all our customers and fans a Happy Earth Day. ShoreTel has a longstanding commitment to help organizations achieve a greener footprint while saving more “green” in their budgets. Day by day, we’re seeing energy-conscious organizations choosing ShoreTel UC systems not only for their ease of use and excellent performance, but also because of the power savings they provide.

One example is Pavement Recycling Systems, a Southern California based company that uniquely offers a full range of state-of-the-art recycling solutions to reclaim, preserve and rehabilitate pavement at any stage of the life-curve, resulting in improved performance, lower costs, and reduced environmental impact. The ShoreTel UC system offers the company unprecedented reliability across all of its five sites, with uninterrupted failover in the event of a T1 line outage.

We recently spoke with PRS Systems Administrator Kim Barbano in preparation for Earth Day, and she had these kind comments regarding their ShoreTel deployment:

“One of our founding principles is to improve performance and reduce costs, while conserving resources and reducing carbon footprint. ShoreTel has helped us achieve these goals in our own business practices by delivering a communications system that is both energy efficient, and easy to manage across multiple locations. We no longer have to send contractors out to our remote offices to make moves, adds or changes—ShoreWare Director lets me manage the system from any Web-based browser, and with the ability to forward calls to any phone, no one knows whether I’m working from home, or in the office.”

The mobility Kim is referencing in conjunction with the reduced power usage of the ShoreTel UC system, also lowers cooling expenses, and the system’s unique distributed architecture, which is based on a compact switch design, helps reduce server sprawl—both important green benefits that also contribute to the ShoreTel system’s lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to competitive systems.

For instance, a study by The Tolly Group found that the ShoreTel UC system consumed up to 62 percent less energy than the Cisco Unified Communications Manager across three typical enterprise-class deployments. In addition to lowering expenses, the decrease in energy consumption has a net positive impact on CO2 emissions.

Additional energy savings can be attributed to the ease of use and manageability of the ShoreTel UC system. Simple centralized management from an intuitive, Web browser-based application, eliminates the need to send personnel and trucks to remote locations. Further savings can also be achieved through using eco-friendly features, such as ShoreTel Converged Conferencing, which supports effective collaboration while reducing the need for business travel, and ShoreWare Contact Center, which enables organizations to create distributed virtual contact centers and support telecommuting.

As our R&D teams develop the next generation IP communications systems, ShoreTel continues to assist companies in sustaining their commitment to eco-friendly practices, while allowing them to improve both TCO and ROI with a highly efficient, modular system that grows as they grow.

ShoreTel Featured in Silicon Valley 150

2009-04-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

Authored by: John W. Combs, CEO

For decades, Silicon Valley has been the nation’s hotbed of innovation, advanced engineering, and ground-breaking entrepreneurship. In recent years, Silicon Valley startups have become household names throughout the world, and Silicon Valley geeks have become media legends.

Therefore, it’s no small measure of ShoreTel’s success that we are now part of the Silicon Valley 150, a special report filed by the San Jose Mercury that ranks public companies headquartered in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, southern San Mateo and southern Alameda counties on the basis of worldwide revenues.

The report compiles information from Bloomberg Financial SEC filings, and based upon our 2008 performance, our positive sales rallied against the economic recession to vault ShoreTel into the top 150. Placement in the top SV 150 reaffirms my belief that delivering excellent products and outstanding customer service nets positive results.

Our competitors are hard pressed to surpass ShoreTel’s proven world-class customer satisfaction levels and ease of use, and consistently fall short of ShoreTel’s initial and total cost of ownership. ShoreTel’s success in turning satisfied customers into raving fans underscores the concept that big names simply mean bigger prices, greater complexity, and a weaker focus on quality.

To see the entire list of companies ranked by the San Jose Mercury News report, please visit the Silicon Valley 150 online article.

ShoreTel’s View of VoiceCon Orlando 2009

2009-04-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Bernard Gutnick, Sr. Director Product Marketing

With a successful VoiceCon still fresh in everyone’s minds, now is a good time to share some of the key trends we noticed at the show, as well as how they apply to ShoreTel.

The migration from legacy PBX solutions to IP-based unified communications solutions continued to be a trend that clearly resonated with attendees. This category shift became clear several months ago when Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection, signifying the “changing of the guard” underway, in which old TDM digital equipment is being replaced by pure IP. ShoreTel’s momentum was highlighted in a keynote presentation by organizer and NoJitter publisher, Fred Knight, underscoring the relevance of our offerings within the changing landscape.

Another major trend we observed was the increased integration of desktop applications with communications systems. For ShoreTel, that meant a demonstration of Microsoft OCS Release 2 integrated with ShoreTel Release 9, which enables organizations to support both Microsoft Communicator and ShoreWare Professional Call Manager clients across the enterprise at the same time. The demo was a rousing success among press, analysts and attendees, making our booth one of the busiest at the show, and garnering the Best in VoiceCon Award for the third year in a row, a title voted on by attendees.

One of the most popular sessions was the PBX Shootout presentation hosted by Allan Sulkin, VoIP Guru, in which ShoreTel was recognized for having a lower total of ownership compared to other vendors.

Overall, attendees were looking for solutions to help reduce costs, aid migration from their legacy Nortel BCM and CS1000 and other vendor platforms, and retain their most valued customers by delivering excellent service during challenging economic periods.

ShoreTel’s Three-peat Leadership: Best in VoiceCon Again

2009-04-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

As ShoreTel continues to attract a huge fan base and produce innovative unified communications solutions, our popularity on the tradeshow floor at VoiceCon Orlando 2009 proves that ShoreTel is a force to be reckoned with. On Wednesday, ShoreTel received the Best in VoiceCon Award for the third year in a row, after attendees voted ShoreTel’s latest product release the Best in Show solution.

The annual Best in VoiceCon Award recognizes new and exceptional enterprise communications solutions, and is an opportunity for the VoiceCon audience to express their opinion on the latest products and solutions that offer true business value. This was particularly gratifying for the ShoreTel team as we strive to understand our customers’ needs and align our offerings accordingly—and as many of our major competitors looked on with envy.

More importantly, we’re very pleased that VoiceCon attendees recognize our commitment to developing industry-leading products and services, and to delivering world-class customer satisfaction. We thank everyone who voted for us, and look forward to earning the title again next year!

ShoreWare now a Sure Choice Worldwide

2009-04-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

As the unified communications industry continues to evolve, there are two things you can count on. First, more and more organizations are realizing the cost and time-saving benefits of being able to easily integrate and manage all forms of voice and digital communications. And second, the ease of management, rich feature set, and user-friendliness inherent in the ShoreTel UC system continues to drive these cost and time-saving benefits further, as organizations across all market sectors become raving ShoreTel fans.

Both of these points were clearly illustrated recently in the Synergy Research Group report, Q4 2008 Collaborative Applications Market Shares, one of the first independent research studies to effectively measure and quantify adoption of unified communications.

Not only has ShoreTel achieved the No.1 market-share position worldwide for small and midsize businesses using its UC desktop application, ShoreWare® Call Manager, according to the report, but ShoreTel ranked sixth in market share for UC desktop units in large enterprises worldwide. This is proof yet again that because of ShoreTel’s brilliant simplicity and leadership in the UC space, ShoreWare Call Manager is rapidly becoming the collaborative application of choice world wide.

To experience for yourself why ShoreWare Call Manager is attracting a growing number of raving fans around the world, see a first-hand demonstration and in less than 10 minutes, you’ll notice the ShoreTel difference.

ShoreTel Web Services SDK: A Leap Forward in Integrating Communications Into Business Processes

2009-03-31T11:30:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

On the heels of announcing ShoreTel 9 yesterday, today we announced our new ShoreTel Web Services SDK, making it easier than ever for developers and companies to integrate our industry-leading UC capabilities into their business processes to foster increased collaboration, productivity and customer service levels. Read the full release here.

Why is this an important leap forward? Because with its distributed architecture, high availability, low TCO and UC features, ShoreTel 9 is the ideal open platform for building custom CEBP solutions, and the SDK allows companies, VARs and system integrators to use the programming language and platform of choice.

Whether it’s integrating phone calls and voicemail into a CRM application, bringing IM into the help desk workflow, adding automated phone calls (complete with ring-down capabilities) to customer service escalation, or hundreds of other applications, our Web Services SDK makes it a straightforward, hassle-free programming effort.

ShoreTel 9: The Future of Personalized Communications in Your Hand

2009-03-30T06:09:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Jeff Ridley, Sr. Director of Product Management

Do more with less has become the mantra du jour across organizations of all sizes and across all sectors. ShoreTel release 9 delivers the type of next generation enhancements organizations need to simplify administration, improve reliability and streamline processes.

Here’s a brief sampling of some of the many innovative features and enhanced capabilities available in this latest release:

Improved Reliability and Simplified Administration

N + 1 Reliability Improvements: This release simplifies the deployment of highly reliability communications through the enhancement of the system’s N+1 redundancy features. By simply adding a spare ShoreGear® Voice Switch at your headquarters, you can provide back-up services to all your remote locations. ShorePhone IP Telephones seamlessly fail over to these designated spare switches, without affecting currently active calls, providing high availability at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional PBXs.

Microsoft Active Directory Integration: Integration with Microsoft Active Directory streamlines the process of provisioning users in ShoreWare® Director and leverages their existing network credentials for authentication within ShoreWare applications. Change your Windows NT password, and it automatically is mapped to your ShoreTel applications. Just another thing you no longer have to worry about.

Enhanced System Security: Customers requiring enhanced network security can take advantage of two new features in this release: 802.1x based network authentication in ShorePhone IP Telephones and 128 bit AES media encryption, which provides standards-based, state-of-the-art protection against eavesdropping.

Improved End User Ease of Use

Personalize Call Handling: A powerful new addition to the ShoreWare Call Manager suite is the Personalized Call Handling feature. Users can define rules on how they would like to have incoming calls treated, regardless of whether the ShoreWare Call Manager application is running. When a call arrives from one of your personal VIP’s, it can be sent to directly to your mobile phone. But when a call arrives from someone on the less important list, they can be sent right to voicemail.

Changing Office Anywhere and Call Handling Modes Based on Location: Devices with built-in GPS that allow third-party applications to access GPS data can leverage ShoreWare Mobile Call Manager’s new Location Based Services (LBS) to define waypoints that trigger automatic changes to Call Handling Mode and Office Anywhere settings, based on the location of the mobile phone. This gives you automatic control of how calls are handled. For example, if your home time is private time, you can set the Mobile Call Manager to automatically set your phone in “out of the office” mode and have all your calls forwarded to voicemail just by driving up into your driveway.

Multitasking at Work with Phone Calls and Instant Messages: In this release, we have expanded the Instant Messaging features of the Professional Call Manager to give users more power. Instant messaging is the perfect tool for getting things done quickly when you are on the phone. With ShoreTel 9, users can expand a standard two-party IM session by adding participants as needed from a list that shows their presence, and provides an actionable menu. What’s more, the new Tabbed Chat interface permits users to keep track of multiple conversations in a single window, rather than juggling several floating windows.

Eliminating Voicemail Tag: Few things in life are more frustrating than a rousing game of voicemail tag. You leave a message, miss their call back, and find yourself leaving a message again. With ShoreTel 9, users can avoid voicemail tag by setting an alert when they see that their colleague in the enterprise, or at a remote office, is on the phone. When the person they need becomes available (signaled by a change in their presence status) a notification appears to let you know. Simply press the call button and you’re connected.

For more information on these features, and details on the other enhancements available with this latest release, contact your local ShoreTel partner.

ShoreTel Prepares to Lead the Call at VoiceCon Orlando 2009

2009-03-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

With just a few days left, the ShoreTel team has been diligently adding the final touches to our much-anticipated activities at the upcoming VoiceCon Orlando conference, from March 30th to April 2nd.

VoiceCon is one of the pre-eminent Unified Communication conferences in the country and a key theme at the Orlando 2009 event is the challenges around IP Telephony implementation. The ShoreTel team is looking forward to meeting with conference participants and demonstrating how the brilliantly simple ShoreTel UC system effectively addresses these challenges, while helping organizations easily boost productivity and reduce costs.

Not only is ShoreTel exhibiting at VoiceCon Orlando in Booth #909, but ShoreTel representatives and ShoreTel customers will be actively participating in several break-out sessions throughout the event.

To find out more about the latest in UC join us at the following presentations:

Monday March 30, 9:00 AM-12:00 PM – “IP Telephony System RFP: Who Delivers the Goods”. ShoreTel Speaker: Jeff Ridley – Director of Product Management

Wednesday, April 1, 2:30-3:45 PM – “Leveraging VOIP for UC”. ShoreTel Speaker: Kevin Gavin – Vice President of Marketing

Wednesday, April 1, 2:30-3:45 PM – “Hardphones, Softphones and Next-Gen Systems”. ShoreTel Speaker: Bernard Gutnick – Senior Director of Product Marketing

Thursday, April 2, 11:30-12:30 PM – “VoiceCon Summit - User Forum”. ShoreTel Customer: Robert Butler, Hay Group

In the meantime, stay tuned for additional VoiceCon updates, and some exciting ShoreTel announcements at the show. This event promises to be an eye-opener, and we are looking forward to seeing the latest from all the players in the UC space. Hope to see you there!

How ShoreTel Helped WSECU (Washington State Employee Credit Union) with their UC Needs

2009-03-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

What do our customers want to get from their UC system? Simple, cost-effective yet superior communications solutions. For the financial services industry, increased competition from rivals and expectations of high-quality customer service, all while having to increase shareholder values means that these organizations have to do more than ever.

ShoreTel has solutions aimed at this market that allow for improved customer service, ensure business continuity, streamline resource management and cost control, and increase overall business performance.

Recently one of our customers – Tony Hildesheim of Washington State Employee Credit Union (WSECU) – sat down with ShoreTel to talk about how our solutions helped his organization reach its communications – and ultimately, its business – objectives. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUL-dJXr7U0&eurl=

Collaboration without Frustration

2009-03-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

Authored by: Bernard Gutnick, Sr. Director Product Marketing

Have you ever been on a call, and wanted to share your desktop, but didn’t want to go through the effort of setting up a collaboration session with a hosted service? Not to mention getting an earful from the CFO about what you’re spending every month for conferencing. You’ve heard it before – “I’d like to show you this presentation. Let’s do web collaboration. Good idea! What’s the bridge number? What’s the web address? How does this work?” That’s not collaboration…that’s frustration!

Companies are constantly looking for ways to increase the quality and efficiency of group collaboration, without spending a fortune, and without wasting time to make it happen. In today’s current workforce climate where remote and multi-location settings is more common than ever, a solution with simplicity at the heart of the solution is the key. ShoreTel’s Call Manager client software with integrated Converged Conferencing is the ideal solution for remote employees. Just call someone, either with the telephone, or via the Call Manager client’s capabilities such as contacts and enterprise directory. Once connected, select Start Bridge Conference. Just a few simple clicks later, and the other person has full view of your computer screen. Current work environments demand that technologies bring convenience and ease-of-use. ShoreTel provides just that.

ShoreTel Wins Prestigious Members Choice Award 2009

2009-03-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

Adding kudos to our rapidly growing awards page is becoming a regular task here at ShoreTel, as understanding of ShoreTel’s easy-to-manage, IP-based communications system continues to spread.

Our latest award from the Telecom Association, a professional membership organization of 3,200 telecom distributors, honors our IP-PBX system with the title "Members Choice"—the winning IP-PBX solution in the Top 10 category. This top award is no minor achievement, according to TA founder Dan Baldwin, who shares that members are “fairly stingy with their votes and only vote for those providers they feel are doing an exceptional job, one that is far above the norm for service providers in the category.”

As ShoreTel continues to expand both its reseller partner and technology partner base, we consistently strive to find partners who share our commitment to world-class customer service and product excellence. When these partners return the compliment by stating for the public record that they feel we are doing the best job in our category and setting the standard for excellence, we know we are offering our customers the best of both possible

Employees Drive Adoption of Unified Communications

2009-02-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

While unified communications deployments are helping a growing number of organizations around the globe weather the economic storm with improved efficiency and reduced costs, many businesses a little further behind in the UC adoption decision-making process are witnessing a groundswell of demand from an unexpected source—employees themselves.

An article written by Charlene O'Hanlon from Channel Insider titled “Despite Economy, Unified Communications Still a Technology to Watch” underscores the fact that employees today strive to be more efficient, and seek out their preferred method of communication, whether it’s telephone, instant messaging or e-mail, to reach that goal. As a result, UC adoption is becoming more employee-driven.

However, organizations interested in learning more about these productivity and cost benefits must understand that not all UC solutions are created equal, and not all will be readily embraced by grateful employees. Ease of use, management simplicity and effectiveness are essential factors that affect whether innovative UC features and applications are well-received by the people for whom they’re designed.

Designing a successful UC application involves careful consideration of these factors, plus the possible barriers to adoption that might deter either an organization or an individual user. Additional considerations include the time-to-deploy, the education process, ease-of-use, and recognizable return on investment.

The ShoreTel Converged Conferencing solution is a good example of how users’ needs drive ShoreTel’s focus on ingenuity. This comprehensive collaboration tool unifies all the elements needed to conduct an efficient virtual meeting in one easy-to-use interface. Audio conferencing, desktop/application sharing, instant messaging, virtual meeting rooms, on-line presentations, and multimedia recording are all available at any time during a conferencing session with just a simple click.

At ShoreTel, we understand that a successful unified communications strategy makes life easier for all employees, and our products are inherently designed to improve efficiency. As Ms O’Hanlon’s article states, “That’s the idea of unified communications.”

Boost Productivity in Tough Economic Times with UC

2009-02-23T04:15:00.000-08:00

Authored by: John W. Combs, CEO

In today’s economic environment, the mantra "Do more with less" has taken on whole new levels of meaning for organizations of all sizes, and across all verticals. At the heart of any focus on increased productivity is the ability to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. The integration of IP telephony and collaboration tools into a unified communications system can improve levels of efficiency throughout the organization—whether you’re a small local school, or a multinational enterprise with a highly distributed and mobile workforce.

Integrating business processes with business communications via a unified communications system makes it easy for workers to collaborate. For instance, a salesperson might be pricing out a new order for a customer and needs information from the finance department. Instead of looking up the finance manager's phone number in the out-of-date printed corporate directory and then physically dialing that number — as he likely would with a legacy phone system — the salesperson simply calls the finance manager with a single mouse click. As the discussion progresses, the finance manager may need to see additional details of the sale to build the cost model, so he simply clicks again to turn the call into a Web conference where they can edit the spreadsheet together. At the same time, he can use instant messaging to ask the vice president of sales for approval on new discount levels.

Easy, affordable access to effective collaboration tools means distributed teams can work together efficiently and in real time. This translates to increased productivity, a potentially shorter sales cycle and ultimately more satisfied customers. Contact centers in particular benefit from these improved business processes, as agents can confer with subject-matter experts in real time to address a customer issue quickly, and ultimately resolve more calls.

While a boost in productivity is the kind of economic stimulus many organizations are looking for today, hard-dollar cost savings are also possible with an integrated unified communications system. By leveraging a shared IT infrastructure, an IP-based unified communications system can result in savings in capital and operating costs–and in today’s economy, success means making the most of every possible advantage.

A New ShoreWare Contact Center 5 Release – Investing in the Right Financial Prescription

2009-02-20T03:28:00.000-08:00

Authored by: Kevin Gavin, VP of Marketing

With the list of companies feeling the financial squeeze growing daily, I am compelled to continue to press the case for how ShoreTel’s solutions can help businesses save money and keep customers coming back for more.

Whenever companies spend money, regardless of economic pressures, they owe it to their shareholders and investors to choose solutions that help them retain customers, improve productivity, and drive down ongoing costs. And if they can invest in a single solution that does all three on a rock solid foundation for growth, then even the most cautious CFO should eagerly approve the expenditure.

Enter the latest release of the ShoreWareÒ Contact Center. Here are just a few of the ways the solution meets these important investment challenges:

Retain Customers – Companies can improve the customer experience by providing options so customers can choose their preferred media to address concerns or questions, and still be directed to the right agent. ShoreWare Contact Center solutions give sophisticated options such as an integrated IVR application for self-service capabilities, callbacks, multimedia support, and skills-based routing so companies can offer flexibility and excellent service. .The new supervisory features in Contact Center 5 help teams ensure quality of service, respond to escalations more efficiently, and train new agents. The result is a happy customer, which translates into a loyal customer and one who comes back for more.

Increase Productivity – ShoreWare Contact Center 5 is built on ShoreTel’s fully distributed unified communications platform, enabling companies to use voice, presence status, IM and video to streamline business processes and improve productivity. Agents use a single unified desktop application through ShoreWare Call Manager that integrates all these capabilities and makes it tremendously easy to access experts or information in multiple ways.

Drive Down Costs – ShoreWare Contact Center 5 makes the cost-effective virtual call center a reality, allowing companies to build a highly efficient and professional contact center team, regardless of where the agents work or live. This can help significantly lower operational costs, and as broadband adoption grows, at-home agents can use a wide variety of devices, including the ShoreTel VPN Phone solution, softphone or even their home phones with the Office Anywhere feature to increase efficiency. In addition, the ShoreTel UC system is easy to deploy, maintain and use, which reduces the burden on IT staff, eliminates reliance on high-priced telecom consultants, and minimizes the need for training. The new hot-standby redundancy option in ShoreWare Contact Center 5 also furthers ShoreTel’s commitment to providing an easy to manage, highly reliable business communications system.

Protect the Investment – ShoreWare Contact Center 5 scales to 600 simultaneous agents and 2,000 total configured agents, so midsize businesses can easily scale to meet their future needs. And because the solution is built on ShoreTel’s open, distributed architecture, the entire system is future-proofed. In today’s tough environment the best investment protection any company can make is to purchase from a company that is financially strong, ranked the best in customer satisfaction and committed to developing products that can easily integrate with business processes to transform the way companies work, while helping them stay agile in a constantly evolving marketplace.