ShoreTel Blog
Summing Up the Year
Posted by ShoreTel on Friday, August 22, 2008
Yesterday we conducted our fiscal year end earnings call following our first full year as a public company, and it was extremely gratifying to share the good news about the terrific state of our company. Those of you interested in all the details can review the complete press release. I want to highlight just a couple of items here.
First, revenues were at an all-time high for the last quarter of the fiscal year, as were revenues for the entire fiscal year – 32 percent year over year revenue growth despite the ongoing economic challenges and in a North American IP Telephony market that grew approximately 10 percent in the same period.
Our customer base grew by 700 during the last quarter and for the full year grew from around 5,000 to more than 8,000. I can’t say enough about the dedication and execution of our distribution partners – with 52 percent quarter over quarter growth from our national partners and a 21 percent growth in sales from our largest regional partners.
Of particular note, we are beginning to experience great results from our new, proprietary Total Cost of Ownership Tool, which combines highly credible third-party data with specific customer configuration requirements to calculate, and then combine, 12 up-front and recurring telephony cost components into a single Total Cost of Ownership computation. We’ve heard from a number of partners who have successfully used the tool to win significant business against some of our competitors because it clearly demonstrates ShoreTel’s long-term cost advantage.
Still, more than anything else, I’m extremely pleased by our continued record customer satisfaction levels. Our ability to provide our customers a Unified Communications system that leads the industry in reliability, scalability, and ease of deployment, maintenance and use – all with the lowest total cost of ownership and world-class customer satisfaction – is growing our base of “raving fans,” who are spreading the word about their positive experiences with ShoreTel. This fuels our accelerated growth and is helping to put the wind at our backs.
We have grown and matured a lot as a company during this last year, and I’m confident that fiscal 2009 will prove to be even better.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO
ShoreTel Lands Among Industry Leaders in Customer Service Ranking... Again
Posted by ShoreTel on Thursday, August 21, 2008
You've heard me talk about how proud I am of ShoreTel's customer satisfaction reputation so I just can't help getting excited when ShoreTel is rated as high as powerhouses Amazon, VMware, Apple and Google. Nice company to keep!
We ranked among them in a survey of IT professionals at LinuxWorld, held the first week of August.
We received a score of 88 out of a possible 100 – only Amazon Web Services was one point (89) better than ShoreTel (88). Check out details of the report.
I've often referred to the IT professionals who are responsible for making the decision to go with ShoreTel as heroes. Nice to know their satisfied heroes...
Labels: CEO
Courage Pays Off
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, August 20, 2008
I often refer to our customers as profiles in courage... and also raving fans. This video featured on NetworkWorld about our customer Bob Glaze at the City of Oakland, is a great example of both. Take a look and see why so many businesses are moving to Unified Communications...and specifically to ShoreTel.
Labels: CEO
Saving Energy Strengthens ShoreTel's Lowest Total Cost of Ownership
Posted by ShoreTel on Monday, August 04, 2008
I've written before about ShoreTel's commitment to the environment and technology design that support social responsibility.
Our team's efforts are paying off! According to a new report from the Tolly Group, the ShoreTel UC system is significantly more energy efficient than the Cisco Unified Communication Manager. You can check out the details of the report, but in brief, ShoreTel:
- Uses 37% less power in a large enterprise network scenario
- Consumes 45% less power to support a medium enterprise scenario of an HQ and 19 branch office sites
- Uses 44% less power in a small office scenario
In every enterprise setting, ShoreTel consumed less energy. This fact wouldn't mean too much if we delivered lower performance, less reliability, or fewer features, or in some other way increased the total cost of ownership. But we don't. In fact, we offer higher performance, greater reliability, more features, and great TCO, which is why we were recently named the Best Overall VOIP Provider by Nemertes Research. It's also why ShoreTel is the fastest growing IP PBX company in the world!
The tremendous focus on corporate environmental responsibility can lead to a lot of aspirational statements that aren't backed up by results (OK, a lot of hype), so having reliable numbers to back up our claims is critical to customers that have made energy efficiency an important part of their procurement evaluation.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO