ShoreTel Blog
ShoreTel awarded Best Channel Vendor by Business Solutions Magazine
Posted by ShoreTel on Friday, January 23, 2009
As Benjamin Franklin once said, "It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation," which makes it particularly rewarding when ShoreTel's outstanding reputation is endorsed through positive feedback from objective third parties.
In a recent survey conducted by Business Solutions Magazine, active value-added reseller (VAR) subscribers named ShoreTel one of the leading companies in the "Best Channel Vendor" VoIP category, giving us higher marks than industry giant Cisco in key categories, such as product reliability, product features, and product innovation.
We are constantly working with our VARs to ensure that ShoreTel's commitment to delivering excellent products and outstanding customer service permeates the entire sales cycle. It's wonderful to see how our efforts are paying off in the form of our highly satisfied VARs, and to get their direct feedback: "ShoreTel has an innovative product line and are channel-friendly without the interference of a direct sales force."
If you're interested in viewing the complete survey results, they are available online as well as in the January 2009 issue of Business Solutions Magazine.
John W. Combs
Labels: Awards, CEO, Customer Experiences
Customer Satisfaction Across Continents
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, January 21, 2009
As ShoreTel expands around the globe, so does our reputation for reaching out and touching the lives of businesses, institutions and people in positive ways. Not only do ShoreTel products and solutions sell themselves because of their quality, durability and capabilities, but our customers also buy our values and our commitment to meeting their needs, and helping them meet the needs of their stakeholders.
The endorsement of our customers provide valuable insight into how our UC solutions can drive productivity and reduce costs for different types of businesses and organizations. Here is an overview of two new customer endorsements from Australia. For full details, download the full case studies.
Harcourts Blue Realty touches the lives of families and businesses everyday in the fast growing eastern suburbs of Brisbane, capital of Queensland, Australia. The company places a high value on customer satisfaction with 98.6 percent of clients reporting they would definitely use the realtors again. To maintain this leadership position, the popular three-branch real estate and property management company selected the ShoreTel UC system because its rich feature set dramatically improved inter-branch communications and customer service. It also provided the scalability the company needed to keep up with growth. The ShoreTel UC system has already created an estimated 30 percent savings in call and system management costs, and all calls within the branches now are completely free.
Child development ministry, Compassion Australia, works with local churches to provide resources, training and expertise to foster the development of children in more than 25 developing countries around the world. Compassion Australia selected a ShoreTel UC system to lower the total cost of ownership of its communications system, and to deliver exceptional reliability and high availability for its 130 employees located around Australia, and its 60,000 national supporters and advocates. The ShoreTel UC system has led to a 60 percent reduction in annual maintenance expenses for this important charity. And because system management is easy, adding users to the system costs less than ever before. Everyone on the system is using ShoreWare® Personal Call Manager to forward their voicemail to e-mail, and to consolidate all messages for the most convenient and efficient access. According to Compassion Australia, the system provides peace of mind.
And whether you're selling families their first new home, or saving the lives of children in developing countries, peace of mind is a very positive thing.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO, Customer Experiences
ShoreTel at Red Herring Global 100
Posted by ShoreTel on Friday, January 16, 2009
I will have the distinct pleasure of participating on a keynote roundtable at the Red Herring Global 100 in San Diego on Friday, January 16 with folks from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Greylock Partners, Allegis Capital, LLC, DivXNetworks, and Mountain Partners Group to discuss taking a company to IPO. This is a subject that I don’t shy away from and, for good reason: We can all learn from the experiences of others. When ShoreTel registered its IPO in July 2007 the economic climate was nothing like it is today. No doubt the state of the economy has left start-ups and VCs in an unprecedented situation. There’s a huge market transition, particularly in the area of communications, with large public companies – once stalwarts of the industry – falling prey not only to the recession but also their historical tendencies and technologies.
It will be interesting to see what my colleagues have to say. I look forward to hearing from others, as well as offering insight into my own experiences. If you happen to be at the event, please feel free to stop by and check out the panel from 11:30 – 12:15 p.m. PT or catch me before or after the session to introduce yourself.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO
Nortel Demise Marks the Beginning of a Huge Category Shift
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, January 14, 2009
As you've no doubt read, Nortel Networks has filed for bankruptcy, marking the demise of a once leading company in the communications industry. Is Nortel just another unfortunate victim of the recession? Does it indicate major problems for all providers of telephony solutions? No and no.
I've worked in the telecommunications industry for more than 35 years and I've seen many changes. Looking back over the past 10 years there has been a very clear and consistent trend; the organizations who build their business in the TDM digital age have struggled mightily to shift to the new IP world. So, while the headlines emphasize the Nortel decline, I believe this has been a trend which has been extremely consistent and, I believe, Nortel is the first "headliner" to sink, but not the last. Avaya and Siemens' acquisitions by private equity companies and Mitel's merger with Inter-Tel are all signs of legacy companies trying to survive in a new world. While we feel terrible about the 35,000 people who might lose their jobs as a result of the bankruptcy, the Nortel story has important long-term industry implications that go beyond "a company’s fall from grace" or "another victim of the recession." It signals a major category shift from old TDM digital equipment to pure IP unified communications, which offers a far more scalable and capable solution at a much lower cost.
Which is why ShoreTel stands to benefit from the exit of Nortel. Unlike most other vendors, ShoreTel began in the IP era with a blank slate so we are focused 100 percent on delivering superior IP-based business communications systems. We have continued to invest in our unified communications solutions and open architecture, and we offer a feature-rich and uniquely scalable platform that's easy to deploy, administer and use, especially across multiple sites.
And we are a stable company with $100M cash in the bank. We have continued to grow despite the downturn with positive cash flow for the last three fiscal years. This means we are well-positioned to become the go-to supplier for customers that may otherwise have looked at Nortel or other companies that don't offer a modern communications platform.
For existing Nortel customers that wonder how they can maintain and grow their systems without a vendor to support them, it's important to recognize that ShoreTel does not require a forklift upgrade, so customers can grow using ShoreTel and then replace their aging Nortel systems as needed - a simple, cost-effective path to the future.
The recession is creating significant hardship throughout our country and the world, but an important part of the recovery will be companies that leverage new technology to become more efficient and productive, enabling them to grow and begin hiring again. As a provider of a business communications system that helps companies operate more efficiently and collaborate more effectively, ShoreTel is ready to help.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO
CEBP and the Open UC Ecosystem
Posted by ShoreTel on Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Many people still think Unified Communications is little more than unified messaging that includes mobile devices - and some vendors have been slow to offer much else. But today's UC technology is at the heart of a trend that Gartner calls Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), and CEBP requires integrating UC technology with a wide variety of applications and devices. Accomplishing this in a way that eliminates integration hassles and multivendor runaround requires working with a UC vendor that has established a rich partner ecosystem based on open standards.
Let's back up a little. Integrating communications with business processes can take many different forms depending on the needs and size of the organization. It may start with a straightforward application plug-in. A sales organization may want to add inbound and outbound call functionality into a CRM application, such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, or RightNow Technologies.
Or it may require tighter integration between UC applications and other solutions. For example, a consulting organization may need to provide desktop communications capabilities, such as a unified inbox, IM and video, to all its remote and mobile users so they can perform the same required tasks in the same way, no matter where they are. A small law firm may want to add call accounting and recording capabilities to its UC system. Or a manufacturing plant may need to implement high-quality, cost-effective videoconferencing to reduce the costs of travel to headquarters and to visit suppliers.
The key is for the UC vendor to have an open platform and develop a broad partner ecosystem - complete with interoperability testing and certification. This rich ecosystem must include vendors with a range of innovative and productivity-enhancing technologies, such as advanced analog, digital and VoIP gateways, SIP and ITSP trunking, call recording applications, sophisticated switches and routers, wireless and mobility solutions, new technology for high availability, and more.
That's why ShoreTel has focused on building its Technology Partner Program, which now includes more than 40 certified partners who work together to ensure our customers can expand and extend their ShoreTel UC systems with the technologies they need to grow and compete. Whether it's dual-mode mobile phones from DiVitas, switches from Extreme Networks, or a contact center from Syntellect, our customers are confident that the solutions interoperate seamlessly with their standards-based ShoreTel UC system and perform exactly the way they were designed to perform
John W. Combs
A Year In Review
Posted by ShoreTel on Monday, January 05, 2009
As we enter the New Year, 2009 presents one of the biggest paradoxes I've seen in all my years as CEO of ShoreTel. While there are undoubtedly strong feelings of optimism and change, the global economic hardship continues and many people are looking out their windows at the wintry sky and wondering what lies ahead.
In order to move forward, you have to understand where you have come from, and with that in mind, I'd like to first acknowledge a few of ShoreTel's 2008 milestones that continue to reflect the core values upon which we have built our business:
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ShoreTel continued to deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction in the industry:
- We received the CustomerSat ACE award for Overall Customer Satisfaction for the second year in a row, together with an ACE award for Technical Support Satisfaction.
- For the 5th year in a row, ShoreTel was ranked #1 in Customer Satisfaction in the Nemertes PilotHouse Awards for Unified Communications and Collaboration.
- We grew our customer and partner base in record numbers, ending the first quarter of our fiscal year with over 8,800 customers and more than 600 partners worldwide.
- On the financial front, ShoreTel delivered its highest ever revenue quarter in the first quarter of the 2009 fiscal year and is starting the New Year with no debt, and money in the bank.
- In October we launched our largest global product release with the introduction of ShoreTel 8.1, expanding new international capabilities into Europe and Asia in particular.
- The grass was greener on this side: ShoreTel UC system was found to consume up to 62% less energy than the Cisco Unified Communications Manager, according to independent testing firm The Tolly Group.
So despite the economic uncertainty that surrounds us, ShoreTel enters 2009 with unwavering optimism and a continued and steadfast belief in the value of our products and services. Though no one can fully predict what the New Year may bring, we know from experience that our strategic focus on our customers, partners, employees and core business values remain the key to ShoreTel’s success.
John W. Combs
Labels: CEO