ShoreTel Blog
ShoreTel Untangles Complexity: Before and After
Posted by ShoreTel on Thursday, January 28, 2010
Authored by: robert
See how life has changed for robert thanks to ShoreTel:
Check out the latest from the ShoreTel Untangle Complexity Video contest.
Labels: Customer Experiences
IBM Lotusphere draws big interest for ShoreTel small business offering
Posted by ShoreTel on Thursday, January 28, 2010
Authored by: Jerome Joanny, Director of Product Integration
While it was no surprise that the ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations demonstration drew a constant crowd at IBM Lotusphere last week, the fact that this unique offering for small businesses was top of the calling card for many large enterprises raised a few eyebrows.
ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations leverages IBM's Lotus Foundations Reach to offer a unique unified communications and collaboration solution that combines a small business appliance, presence awareness, instant messaging, emailing, calendaring and IP telephony in an "out-of-the-box" solution.
By combining IBM and ShoreTel product excellence, this powerful and highly reliable system is not only ideal for small and midsize businesses with limited or no in-house IT resources, but meets the needs of large enterprises with smaller remote offices.
If you missed the show or didn’t get a chance to stop by and see the demonstration, check out the video of ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations at work.
You can also email us for more information about the ongoing beta program.
Labels: Market Perspective, Product Updates
Is your IP phone one in a million?
Posted by ShoreTel on Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Authored by: Dieter Rencken, Senior Product Manager
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Passing the one million phone shipment milestone is not just a noteworthy business achievement for ShoreTel, but it’s also a testament to the quality and value of the product.
When ShoreTel engineers set out to design an IP phone for the ShoreTel system, their mission was to create a telephone that users would love. They understood that the success of any new technology depends largely on how easy and pleasant it is to use.
They also recognized that employees are typically the most expensive asset in any company. Giving them communication tools that not only help improve responsiveness and productivity, but that they actually enjoy using, is essential for delivering business value in today’s constantly connected world.
So they designed for multiple factors, including ergonomics, aesthetics, sound quality, comfort, and ease of management. All ShoreTel IP phones are also compliant with the American Disabilities Act, meeting the ADA Standard for Accessible Design.
Starting with the original ShoreTel IP 210, 530 and 560 models, the family of ShoreTel IP phones complements the ShoreTel Call Manager application suite, and offers phone-centric users easy access to ShoreTel’s fleet of brilliantly simple yet powerful IP features.
How do our customers love ShoreTel? Let me count the ways … there are at least a million of them!
Labels: Customer Experiences
ShoreTel’s “Untangling Complexity” Video Contest Starts Today
Posted by ShoreTel on Monday, January 25, 2010
Authored by: Gina Jacobs, Sr. Director of Marketing Communications
ShoreTel’s first video contest has kicked off, and we can’t wait to see what our clever, talented users will submit.
In keeping with ShoreTel’s credo, it’s brilliantly simple to enter:
- Create a short video (3 minutes max) and tell us how ShoreTel’s brilliantly simple IP phone system has helped your business simplify communications and send complexity packing.
- We’ll judge your video on its creativity, originality, humor and inspiration, so let your imagination run free!
- If you’re one of the winners, you get an awesome prize, like a Sony Bravia 52-inch HDTV, a Sony VAIO 14-inch black laptop, a Sony Cybershot digital camera, or an Amazon Gift Card in the amount of $3,000; $1,000; or $500.
You’ll even get a free ShoreTel messenger bag ($35 value) just for submitting an entry.
So what are you waiting for? Get the full contest details and start uploading your videos.
Latest ShoreTel Activities: Integration, IBM Lotusphere and ITEXPO
Posted by ShoreTel on Thursday, January 21, 2010
Authored by: Gina Jacobs, Sr. Director of Marketing Communications
It’s been a busy week for ShoreTel, with exciting product news and two events in the “Sunshine State:”IBM’s Lotusphere 2010 in Orlando and TMC’s ITEXPO 2010 in Miami.
First, we unveiled ShoreTel 10, the latest version of our unified communications (UC) software, which particularly benefits large enterprises that want to integrate new UC capabilities into their legacy, multivendor environments.
We also shared how a growing number of ShoreTel enterprise customers are deploying cross-platform UC solutions that help leverage existing investments in legacy PBXs, including Nortel, with the ShoreTel 360 Legacy Migration Program.
ShoreTel is helping companies at the other end of the size spectrum, too.
Small and midsized businesses can reap the benefits of UC with an integrated “office in a box” solution that’s tailored to their size and budget. At IBM Lotusphere 2010, we demonstrated ShoreTel’s integration with the IBM Lotus Foundations Reach appliance for SMBs.
Down in Miami at ITEXPO, ShoreTel’s director of product management, Jeff Ridley has been addressing two topics that are of keen interest as the world of enterprise communications continues to change.
In The Evolution of Enterprise Telecommunications Panel, he provided insight into what organizations should expect as the world of business communications continues to change and as converged solutions take on greater importance. Jeff also shared some best practices to help multichannel contact centers improve their customer service and more effectively manage customer relationships.
If you missed the shows and would like to hear more about how ShoreTel can help your business, contact your local ShoreTel reseller today and sign up for a demo.
Labels: Event, Product Updates
Cross-platform UC Helps Nortel Customers Salvage Investment
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Authored by: John W. Combs, CEO
As recently as last year, customers were investing large amounts of money in buying new Nortel systems. Now with Avaya taking the reins having bought Nortel out of bankruptcy, Nortel customers are faced with the dilemma of how to salvage some of their investment in their legacy Nortel PBXs without disrupting their communication systems and business processes.
Understandably, they are hesitant to scrap their entire investment, but many customers may feel that obsolescence is the only thing in store for their systems.
When Avaya acquired Nortel, it attempted to reassure the current Nortel base about how it would support existing product lines and invest in product development. Yesterday, Avaya began rolling out a roadmap that essentially points Nortel customers to install new system, Avaya Aura, to manage their old systems.
The ultimate destination for Nortel customers remains unclear, however it seems to lead to a significant investment into a very complex product concept to connect the Nortel system to Avaya.
Providing an ‘overlay’ system to manage remote Nortel and other systems will be a costly and complicated endeavor. That is exactly the type of design flaw that ShoreTel has successfully avoided because we designed a brilliantly simple solution from the ground up for the IP age.
Nortel and other legacy PBX customers should know that from the beginning, ShoreTel has offered a brilliantly simple alternative to incrementally investing to protect their original communications investment by integrating our cross-platform UC solution into their existing system.
The ShoreTel 360 Legacy Migration Program is designed to help organizations, especially ones with multiple locations and a multivendor environment, take sensible, gradual transition to unified communications. One that doesn’t dismantle their entire legacy PBX infrastructure in one fell swoop and instead allows them to migrate to an all-IP solution based on their own timeline and budget.
ShoreTel’s IP-based architecture supports SIP and other open standards so it easily integrates with existing, third-party PBXs. This lets companies adopt ShoreTel’s UC features across the enterprise without purchasing a new system to manage their current systems. ShoreTel can provide a safe and economical migration path that won’t disrupt the business and adds new capabilities that make the existing system even easier to manage.
Ultimately, organizations find that their aging PBX begins to cost more money to maintain than it does to replace it. Until then, however, ShoreTel wants to provide them with a way to salvage their investment.
Labels: CEO, Customer Experiences, Market Perspective, Product Updates
ShoreTel Teaches an Important Lesson at BETT
Posted by ShoreTel on Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Authored by: Tom Perry, Director of Marketing EMEA
As more and more schools and colleges around the world are realising the benefits of unified communications (UC) solutions, an increasing number are turning to ShoreTel.
Designed to be brilliant simple to deploy, use and manage, ShoreTel offers educational institutes powerful UC capabilities that drive efficiency with a low total cost of ownership.
At ShoreTel UK we are therefore looking forward to attending BETT, the world’s largest educational technology event which will take place in London from 13th to 16th January 2010.
At stand C80 at London’s Olympia, ShoreTel is presenting its UC solutions in partnership with Videonations, a leading videoconferencing, audio visual and voice over IP (VoIP) integrator.
The stand, which is entitled ‘Alive with Collaborative Technology,’ creates a live, interactive environment where visitors can experience the full range of UC technologies. The ShoreTel team is on hand to answer questions about our VoIP with fully integrated UC solutions, and how they meet the needs of the education sector.
ShoreTel understands the challenges schools and colleges face in providing rich learning environments to its staff and students by deploying modern UC technology. We’ve already helped many education customers achieve their goals, including Richard Huish from Taunton, Somerset, Coleg Glan Hafren from Cardiff, and Trafford College from Manchester.
These forward-thinking schools and colleges have already transformed communications using ShoreTel’s solutions and made educators, faculty and staff more accessible to students, colleagues and parents.
We look forward to seeing you at BETT. If you are unable to join us there, sign up today for a free ShoreTel demonstration and we’ll be pleased to show you how our fully integrated UC solutions can help your organization improve efficiency and collaboration.
ShoreTel Achieves “Top 10 Vendors of 2009” Ranking
Posted by ShoreTel on Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Authored by: Walt Weisner, VP of Global Services
While the quality of ShoreTel products and services speaks for itself, it seems as though ShoreTel customers simply can’t stop talking out loud about our commitment to customer satisfaction.
ShoreTel was ranked one of the Top 10 Vendors of 2009 in the recently released VendorRate Year End Report. We also captured the top spot in the Enterprise Telecommunications Equipment category, achieving an “Exceptional” rating.
VendorRate is an independent, vendor-neutral company that rates and reports on the business performance of IT and telecom vendors across a range of categories. Throughout the year, it gathers ratings from technology professionals in companies of all sizes. The feedback comes straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
ShoreTel is honored to be so highly rated by the people we serve every day. The VendorRate ranking is a direct reflection of our focus on delivering total customer satisfaction.
At ShoreTel, we continually monitor satisfaction levels and survey our customers for their specific feedback on how we’re doing. Achieving high customer satisfaction is considered part of everyone’s job, from our CEO to our resellers.
By using quantitative, real-time customer satisfaction data, we are able to enhance our products, preempt potential issues, and quickly resolve any problems.
We constantly focus on the things that matter the most to customers, and that has brought us success: In the VendorRate report, ShoreTel was one of the top five companies in the categories of Integrity, Usability, Reliability, Budget, Effectiveness and Recommend.
One interesting finding of this year’s report was that the small and midsize technology vendors outperformed the “big brand” vendors. Rather than basing their decisions on a brand, IT and telecom professionals are basing their decisions on the benefits.
After all, it’s easy for competitors to talk about the brilliant simplicity and benefits of their technology solutions, but it seems to be far more complicated for them to deliver on them.
A 2015 View of The UC Landscape
Posted by ShoreTel on Monday, January 04, 2010
Authored by: John W. Combs, CEO
In my recent end-of-year post, I talked about the major transitions taking place in 2009, and how the world is changing dramatically for the legacy TDM players.
Now let’s take a refreshing look at how the business communications landscape is likely going to look in 2015.
Here’s my prediction: We’re going to see ShoreTel, Cisco and some combination of IBM, Microsoft and Google running business communication systems in North America.
Right now we have a communications industry that’s being transformed as pure IP players take over the market. TDM is dying, and it’s taking formerly formidable, monolithic companies down with it. I believe Nortel is just one of many to fall.
Take Avaya, for example. Avaya is now at $6 billion of debt with interest payments and many things to accomplish, including having to integrate two companies. Interestingly, Nortel went down with only $2 billion in debt.
Mitel is also carrying the weight of heavy debt, and likely will need another infusion of cash in the near future if it continues to spend at current levels.
NEC may be financially sound, but still hasn’t made the transition from TDM to IP technology, and it remains to be seen how effective it will be.
The transition I’m describing isn’t going to be a minor tweak in the communications business, either. There’s going to be significant fallout in the industry that will revolutionize the marketplace by 2015.
This exciting time of transition provides a major opportunity, and ShoreTel is going to take advantage of it by accelerating our growth over the coming quarters. We have big plans for the UC market in the next five years, so keep an eye on us—you won’t want to miss this.