ShoreTel Blog
Michael Gregoire Joins Our Board
Posted by ShoreTel on Monday, November 24, 2008
When it comes to growing a dynamic and innovative company, the recipe for success lies in the value of the technology and in the talent of the leadership. And for that reason, I am pleased to welcome Mike Gregoire, chairman, president and CEO of Taleo Corporation, to our board of directors. You can read the complete press release, but I want to take a moment to acknowledge the value that someone like Mike brings to ShoreTel.
With his track record at Taleo, and long list of achievements as a former executive vice president at PeopleSoft and executive director at EDS, Mike is truly the voice of success. Throughout his career so far, he has extensive experience working with companies of different sizes and turning opportunities and challenges into triumphs - all of which make him a perfect fit for ShoreTel.
ShoreTel is at an amazing point in its development, as we continue our steady growth by offering industry-changing innovations and delighting our customers, and as we rapidly mature into a heavyweight brand in the unified communications industry. Our goal is to continue on this trajectory despite the challenging economy, and we’re looking to some of the best and brightest business minds to help us accomplish this task. Mike certainly fits that description, and I’m thrilled to welcome him aboard.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO
Thanks For The Memories: ShoreTel At VoiceCon San Francisco 2008
Posted by ShoreTel on Thursday, November 20, 2008
We could not be more thankful to you - our raving fans - who all helped make VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 such a tremendous success for everyone here at ShoreTel.
If you had the opportunity to attend, you may have noticed that our booth was consistently packed with people! It was truly, ‘standing room only.'
The ShoreTel team enjoyed a whirlwind few days, meeting with as many media, industry analysts, partners and most importantly customers in the booth that we could manage to squeeze in. The feedback was consistently in the superlative, and I'm sure that everyone we met could feel the positive ShoreTel energy and buzz. ShoreTel stole the show with rock solid demos, and a terrific theater presentation around the reliability, affordability and simplicity of our solutions, If you missed our demo, we invite you to attend our live online demo every Friday at 1pm EST/10am PST.
ShoreTel's an easy system to setup and use so we spent more time running the wires and polishing the glass countertops on our demo stations than configuring our system! Needless to say, trade shows take a tremendous amount of work and I would like to thank all ShoreTel employees who went above and beyond to make our presence so well received.
Although there is no best in show award for VoiceCon in San Francisco, we believe we showed our partners, analysts, customers - and even our competitors - that ShoreTel is definitely the one to watch in the months and years to come.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO
The Future of Easy-to-Use, Affordable Conferencing is Here
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, November 12, 2008
How many times have you heard someone tell you, "Wait a minute, and I'll try to conference you in...?" Voice calls, audio conferences, video, Web conferences, all offer time and cost-savings opportunities for immediate collaboration, yet many organizations struggle to put these opportunities at users' fingertips.
Our philosophy at ShoreTel is that unified communications (UC) should be synonymous with easy-to-use, simple and affordable communications. That's why we recently announced ShoreTel Converged Conferencing 7.1, which integrates with the ShoreWare Call Manager in ShoreTel 8.1 to let users quickly host meet-me audio and Web conferences, chat securely via IM, and instantly share documents.
Converged Conferencing is as simple as it is flexible. For instance, if you're on a call with a colleague and decide you need another subject matter expert to join, you simply create a conference session with a single click. Once you're all on the line, you can immediately pull up a document for everyone to share, even as you send a secure instant message to another colleague on the project, just to make sure there isn’t a new draft already in the works. And you can do it all through a single desktop interface.
This is a significant step forward in bringing all forms of communication into the unified communications experience. The ability to collaborate so effectively at the exact moment you need to is not just a sure boost to productivity, but helps eliminate the communication issues and frustrations of trying to coordinate the activities of disparate or isolated groups.
ShoreTel Converged Conferencing 7.1 also eliminates the need for the complex and expensive hosted conferencing solutions that are currently on the market, and it combines the convenience of IM with enterprise-level security, encrypting the instant messaging flow between enterprise users to keep your proprietary information secure.
A complete list of features and benefits for Converged Conferencing 7.1 is here, and you also can see it in action at VoiceCon San Francisco in Booth 317.
Kevin Gavin
Press Star for ShoreTel
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, November 12, 2008
People go to trade shows for a number of different reasons, and the crowds that are flocking to ShoreTel Booth 317 at VoiceCon San Francisco are no exception. Over the past day or so, we’ve been visited by everyone from prospective customers to intrigued technologists, and from satisfied partners to raving fans.
We've even noticed a few of our competitors' polo shirts among the standing-room only audiences at our presentations.
Regardless of why they came to VoiceCon, our visitors have been virtually unanimous in their feedback on ShoreTel: awesome demonstrations, awesome product. And while the regularly-scheduled presentations have been spilling out into the aisles, each of the surrounding demo-stations showcasing our recent ShoreTel 8.1 and Converged Conferencing 7.1 releases, has been inundated with excited and curious show attendees.
At the evening reception yesterday, our impressive new booth was packed beyond capacity and I had the pleasure of talking with many of our partners, customers and potential customers about our new feature releases. Clearly, we had answered the call for more advanced, easy-to-use and affordable unified communications solutions.
Executives from organizations with offices around the world were raving about the new ShoreTel 8.1 features that are available on more mobile devices and provide a simple user interface in multiple languages.
Others were raving about the latest Converged Conferencing improvements that make it easier and more affordable, to bring audio and Web conferencing in-house, and our desktop video capabilities that don’t require an immersive theater or complex tiling technology to facilitate collaboration.
But don’t worry if you were unable to make VoiceCon 2008 and experience these new features first hand. Simply visit the Product Demonstration page of our Web site and choose the demonstration that’s right for you. Maybe next time you’ll visit us as a raving fan!
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO
Talk it up at VoiceCon SF
Posted by ShoreTel on Friday, November 07, 2008
VoiceCon is a showcase for the unified communications industry, and an important opportunity for ShoreTel to highlight our latest innovations and participate in thought-provoking, insightful, and educational expert discussions. We're proud to be a platinum sponsor of VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 next week, and looking forward to sharing our knowledge and experience with attendees from around the world, right here in our backyard.
ShoreTel will be busy at this fall's event. We have a lot of ShoreTel expert speakers on the Conference Program, and will be making an important announcement on Monday, Nov. 10. We're also demonstrating how ShoreTel is taking unified communications to the next level - providing simple, affordable features that can dramatically improve day-to-day communications. That should be welcome news for businesses currently forced to rely on expensive, hosted services.
If you're planning on attending the show, come by to hear some of our execs speak at the sessions listed below, and stick around afterwards to introduce yourself. Also, visit us in Booth 317 where our ShoreTel staffers are giving product demos, and we'll be handing out ShoreTel backpacks and mobile phone headsets.
More importantly, come see why so many of our customers are not just satisfied customers, but are "raving fans."
- Monday, Nov. 10 – 1:30-4:30 pm
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Topic: Unified Communications: Who’s Offering What?
Speaker: Jeff Ridley
Location: Room 132
- Tuesday, Nov. 11 – 2:45-3:45 pm
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Topic: Hard Phones, Softphones, and Next-Gen Systems
Speaker: Dieter Rencken
Location: Room 124
- Tuesday, Nov. 11 – 3:00-3:30 pm
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Topic: Leading EDGE-ucation Pure IP Unified Communications
Speaker: Rich Winslow
Location: Leading EDGE-ucation Theater on the Exhibit Show Floor
- Wednesday, Nov. 12 – 2:45-3:45 pm
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Topic: Leveraging VoIP Investments for Unified Communications
Speaker: Jeff Ridley
Location: Room 132
- Thursday, Nov. 13 – 8:00-8:45 am
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Topic: IP Telephony in Crisis Situations
Speaker: Dale Tonogai
Location: Room 131
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO
ShoreTel on Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 List
Posted by ShoreTel on Thursday, November 06, 2008
In Silicon Valley, explosive growth among technology companies is not that unusual. What is unusual, however, is sustainable explosive growth. ShoreTel has just been ranked 25th on the 2008 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 listing for Silicon Valley Internet, media, entertainment and communications companies because ShoreTel grew by 851 percent from 2003 to 2007. (For a PDF of this year’s list, click here). We then built on this tremendous growth with record revenues of $35.9 million for the first fiscal quarter of 2009 – a 12 percent increase over the first quarter of 2008 and a three percent increase over the prior quarter.
All this is great news, but what pleases me the most is how we do it:
- By listening to customers and giving them solutions that fit their specific needs and infrastructure, enhance productivity, and cut costs
- By combining innovation with reliability
- By making our products easy to deploy and use
- By ensuring the lowest total cost of ownership
The result is that we continue to win new customers over tough competitors and in a very dynamic marketplace. Then, as a result of our easy-to-manage, reliable and affordable solutions, we turn these customers into "raving fans" who keep expanding their systems, and who keep inspiring us to develop great products for them. It's a formula for sustainability that has succeeded from the very beginning, and we’re dedicated to following it for many years to come.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO