ShoreTel Blog
The Importance Of Sister Companies
January 27, 2012
Authored by: Andrew Lee, Marketing Analyst
As ShoreTel continues to grow, we have larger customers. Larger businesses are often multi-national, and are more likely to have multi-sites even if they are 100 percent domestic. Having these larger businesses as our customers is a positive affirmation that our marketing and branding efforts are paying off.
In fact, over 10 percent of our customer base are companies with 250 employees or more. A number of these customers are in the services, manufacturing, finance/insurance/real estate and wholesale sectors. To give you a sense of scale, there are currently over 65,000 businesses in America in this segment. (more…)
How Technology Vendors Can Navigate Today’s Challenging IT Spending Environment
January 26, 2012
Authored by: Andrew Lee, Marketing Analyst
Although the current economy has resulted in zero growth of corporate IT budget spending since 2010, there is still plenty of opportunity out there.
Remember that, in most organizations, a lot of IT spending is done outside of the corporate IT budget. As a technology vendor, it’s important to bear in mind that with the rapid consumerization of IT, the pool of money out there transcends what is reported in the traditional IT budget. Unless you are selling a product applicable only toward IT, it’s smart to pay attention to the spending power that other departments have. (more…)
New Interactive Unified Communications Project Guide
January 25, 2012
Authored by: ShoreTel, Brilliantly Simple
Choosing an IP phone system and grasping the cost-benefits of UC isn’t easy. A single Web search for “IP telephony” proves how overwhelming the information is.
ShoreTel has recently unveiled an easy-to-use guide; “Choosing a Unified Communications Solution” cuts through the clutter, and delivers answers to save you time and money. (more…)
Aberdeen Webinar: TCO Benchmarking for Unified Communications
January 24, 2012
Authored by: Mark Arman, Vice President of Business Development
Jan. 25 at 10 a.m. PST: REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR HERE
Don’t miss tomorrow’s webinar discussing the results of a recent customer survey, including how the total cost of ownership (TCO) is measured in:
- Capital costs
- Implementation and training
- Ongoing support
- System administration
- Networking/long distance usage
Businesses are under unrelenting pressure to optimize costs and improve profitability. Swapping an outdated phone system for a modern Unified Communications system clearly has many benefits, but companies still need to consider their return on investment. To that end, unified communications has become critical to businesses but the TCO does not have to put enterprises in the red when deploying and maintaining these systems.
The Importance of VoWLAN
January 23, 2012
Authored by: Christian Gilby, Sr. Product Manager Mobility
Unlike some of the recent mobility offerings being touted, ShoreTel Mobility supports VoIP/ Voice over wireless local area network (VoWLAN) with automatic handover between Wi-Fi and cellular. ShoreTel Mobility leverages the combination of reactive, proactive and policy metrics to provide reliable, automatic handover in all environments.
Without Client support for VoIP/VoWLAN, enterprises can’t leverage corporate and remote WLAN networks to extend coverage and reduce costs. (more…)
ShoreTel Reinforces Commitment to Resellers
January 18, 2012
Authored by: ShoreTel, Brilliantly Simple
The latest investments in ShoreTel’s reseller tools and resources demonstrate ShoreTel’s channel leadership.
Now available: Certification Central, a new learning management training system associated with ShoreTel University; an updated reseller dashboard, a critical partner relationship management tool; and a revitalized store for resellers, for quick and easy access to print-on-demand ShoreTel collateral and other demand creation tools.
Live from Orlando: It’s ShoreTel Communicator for IBM Sametime at Lotusphere 2012
January 17, 2012
Authored by: Bernard Gutnick, Senior Director, Product Marketing
The only thing more fun being IBM’s partner showing integration with their Sametime client, is meeting some of the ShoreTel customers in attendance.
Greg Neveau, Dir of Tech Architecture, Brunswick Corp
Cathy Dorn, Administration, Magna International
I was pleased to meet the team from Brunswick and Magna International, and demonstrating how ShoreTel integrated with IBM Sametime. It was pretty cool to show how our telephony presence, unified messaging, call logs and more are all seamlessly integrated in the IBM Sametime client.
Not to mention that an incoming call rings my ShoreTel phone and my ShoreTel Mobility enabled smart phone.
We’re showing our ShoreTel Mobility solutions for Apple iPhones, iTouch and iPad, plus Android phones in the booth. In fact, ShoreTel’s and our partner Polycom are the only two UC companies demonstrating tight integration with the IBM suite of solutions.
Cheers!
Knowing Our Strengths – SWOT Analysis and ShoreTel
Authored by: Andrew Lee, Marketing Analyst
Those of us who went to business school (or did a business subject study in academia at some point) are aware of a business intelligence methodology called the SWOT analysis.
SWOT = Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats.
As the name implies, it’s essentially a structured method for assessing and evaluating both the positive and negative factors that are impacting a business. SWOTs are useful for many business applications – marketing, strategic planning, viability studies, etc. (more…)
ShoreTel Customer Cost Savings
January 13, 2012
Authored by: Liz Pedro, Customer Programs Manager
While the upfront costs of ShoreTel’s brilliantly simple enterprise unified communication solution is already among the lowest in the industry, we know that our easy to use solutions go even further to drive down burdensome operations and maintenance costs, freeing up more budget and resources over the long term.
Total cost of ownership is a key metric for assessing costs, benefits and risks – enabling organizations to properly evaluate competing solutions before they buy. It aligns their final decision with business needs, while understanding the effects of future requirements and functionalities. (more…)
Using the ShoreTel Browser
January 12, 2012
Authored by: Grant Schenck, ShoreTel Professional Services
ShoreTel Innovation Network members get access to several Software Development Kits (SDKs) that provide programmers with interfaces to various parts of the ShoreTel phone system. One of the core SDKs in the program is the ShoreTel Multi Line COM Object SDK known more simply as the COM SDK. The COM SDK allows the development of call and media control applications that work with the ShoreTel phone system.
One of the sample applications, “STMLBrowser,” is a useful tool for understanding what the ShoreTel phone system can do at a nuts and bolts level. As a very basic example of showing how the browser can be used we’ll look at a recent integration between ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center and Salesforce.com call center adapter client, which I helped a customer navigate using the browser. (more…)