ShoreTel Blog
UC the ShoreTel Way – Brilliantly Simple
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, May 20, 2009
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.
Labels: Market Perspective
Go Your Own Way With ShoreTel at Interop
Posted by ShoreTel on Tuesday, May 19, 2009
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.
Labels: Event
ShoreTel gives IP phones a new lease of life
Posted by ShoreTel on Monday, May 18, 2009
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.
Labels: Market Perspective
Maintaining Workforce Resources
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, May 13, 2009
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.
Labels: Market Perspective
San Francisco Giants Hit a Homerun with ShoreTel VoIP
Posted by ShoreTel on Monday, May 11, 2009
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
Labels: Customer Experiences