“SGH Martineau is similar to many multi-site, multi-practice law firms in that we grapple with the challenges of keeping our staff within easy reach of clients, without sacrificing on cost capture information. ShoreTel impressed with its ability to integrate with our current technologies, thanks to its open API and will now provide the firm with the ability to provide clients with a single number that directly links them with their contact or the relevant Personal Assistant.”

 - Dean Hill-Jowitt, IT Director, SGH Martineau.

SGH Martineau, a significant UK law firm with offices in Birmingham, London and Brussels, has selected a ShoreTel UC system with ShoreTel Mobility to improve ease of access to fee-earners for clients, without sacrificing security or billable time capture.

Innovation is central to SGH Martineau’s business strategy, particularly as it embraces an extended team of clients, partners and staff following the merger of SGH and Martineau at the end of 2011. As fee-earners increasingly make client calls whilst on the move or from home, SGH Martineau recognised the need to provide a communications infrastructure that does not impinge on a client’s ability to reach fee-earners.

ShoreTel provides a single number, available on phones in the office, at home or via mobile, ensuring fee-earners are always contactable. In addition, ShoreTel’s mobility solution enables mobile calls to be routed over the corporate Wi-Fi network, saving an estimated 30 percent on mobile call costs annually.

SGH Martineau prides itself on its resilient, flexible and client facing IT infrastructure; its communications technology is no exception. ShoreTel is fully interoperable with the firm’s existing ecosystem – providing integration with Microsoft as well as time capture, document and matter management systems.

The firm worked with ShoreTel partner Proximity Communications on this project and plans to roll out ShoreTel in the first quarter of 2012, following a successful pilot during late 2011.

“We welcome SGH Martineau to our legal client community. Law firms across the world are recognising the power of the ShoreTel UC system to improve client service, capture billable time and managed costs.”
- Tom Perry, marketing director of EMEA at ShoreTel.

This prestigious list of the most influential and powerful leaders in the IT channel recognizes those executives directly responsible for driving channel sales and growth within their organization, while evangelizing and defending the importance of the channel throughout the entire IT Industry.

Highlights of the ShoreTel channel program over the past year include:

• Increased investment in lead generation and distribution across U.S. and several verticals including government, professional and banking sectors.
• Migration of lead management to Salesforce.com, making opportunity registration and management easier.
• Continued development of turnkey marketing and demand generation toolkits.
• Re-vamp of individual partner dashboards, providing comprehensive details on partner sales, customer satisfaction, TAC usage and investment in ShoreTel training/resources.
  • Introduction of new Learning Management System & on-line course delivery, enabling partners to have more choices in maintaining their sales and technical knowledge investments.

For the ninth consecutive year, Channel Chiefs were selected by the CRN editorial team based on channel experience, program innovations, channel-driven revenue, and public support for the importance of IT Channel Sales.

Selected by CRN’s editorial staff, the 2012 Channel Chiefs list is featured in the February issue of CRN Magazine and will be featured online at www.crn.com.

“The 2012 Channel Chiefs list recognizes vendor executives dedicated to driving channel programs in the IT marketplace. Our annual Channel Chiefs issue is a must-read for IT solution providers evaluating new vendors or looking to expand solution offerings. These are the people, the products and the programs that any savvy solution provider needs to know. We congratulate this year’s Channel Chiefs for their stellar record of business innovation applaud them for their continued dedication to the partner community.”
- Kelley Damore, VP, Editorial Director, UBM Channel.

Operating day-to-day out of their Corporate HQ in nearby Santa Monica, The Recording Academy, shifts personnel to work full-time at the LA Convention Center and the Staples Center as they plan and prepare for the annual Grammy’s Awards show. ShoreTel’s Unified Communications & IP Telephony solution enables the Recording Academy and its employees to seamlessly operate at the Staples Center & LA Convention Center – as if they were still in their offices in Santa Monica. They are able to streamline operations, reduce costs and provide for one less thing to worry about as they work around the clock preparing for the Awards show.

Recognizing the value that ShoreTel provides and the assistance I’ve provided over the tenure of our relationship, Rick Engdahl, CIO of the Recording Academy stunned me (& my wife!) by showing his appreciation by providing a pair of his tickets to the Awards show.

The 54th Annual Grammy’s Awards Show!

Hosted by LL Cool J and with an opening act by the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, was absolutely amazing. Bruno Mars performed next and got the whole stadium moving – the energy he brought was an awesome way to start the show. Kelly Clarkson & Jason Aldean also performed a fantastic duet and got the crowd pumped up for the night to come. Rihanna & Cold Play then came back-to-back and performed together flawlessly – it was truly awesome to watch.

As all of the attendees entered the stadium, we were provided with a colored bracelet, but nobody knew what it was for… We were then told during one of the TV commercial intermissions, that is was for the upcoming Cold Play performance. As Cold Play began performing, everyone’s bracelets lit up in different colors and created a dramatic light show throughout the stadium audience.

Perennial performer, Tony Bennett, and Carrie Underwood performed together and sang a soulful duet of “It had to be You.” And who can forget Adele?? Adele was THE big winner of the night – pulling down 6 Grammy’s! It was a triumphant return to the stage for Adele – who belted out one of the most memorable performances of the evening by singing her big hit, “Rolling in the Deep.”

The Tributes to both Etta James & Whitney Houston were very emotional. Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt sang a touching duet to honor Etta James, while Jennifer Hudson sang a moving and highly charged tribute to the very recently deceased Whitney Houston. The Foo Fighters and Katy Perry each rocked the stadium inside & outside in their own ways. Maroon-5 and Foster the People, each sang Beach Boys songs – capped off with a song by The Beach Boys themselves!

Next came a welcome honor to Glen Campbell, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, who came out to sing Rhinestone Cowboy after tributes by Blake Shelton & The Band Perry. As the Grammy’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, the legendary Paul McCartney came out twice throughout the show and showed that he is still as talented as ever.

Nikki Minaj’s performance was the one question mark throughout the show… correctly overwhelmingly panned by the media. The audience just continued to look at each other as we collectively realized we couldn’t exactly decipher what we were witnessing. The nightcap and finale of the evening was one of the highlights for me as the finale consisted of a guitar “jam session” comprised of Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Walsh, and Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters). They brought the house down and left everyone standing and cheering for a few minutes. My wife and I love live music and to see all of the above performances and singers/bands all on the same stage, back-to-back, within a 3.5 hour timeframe was just unbelievable and an experience to remember for the rest of our lives.

On behalf of ShoreTel, THANK YOU to the Recording Academy & Rick Engdahl for your continued patronage.

With ShoreTel Mobility, I not only get access to all the rich deskphone and UC capabilities on my favorite smartphone, but also the ability to keep my business and personal profiles separate. My business contacts see my desk phone number as the calls route through the enterprise, while my personal contacts see the cell phone number.

Here’s a quick look at how easy it is to keep my personal calls separate from business on my Android.

The ShoreTel Voice Forms IVR Application, a solution built via ShoreTel’s open software interfaces, allows callers to complete audio “forms” simply by speaking their answers one by one when prompted with questions. A resulting wave file contains their responses separated by “beep” delimiters and is delivered to designated ShoreTel voicemail boxes.   

ShoreTel customers such as South Shore Medical Center in Massachusetts designed their prescription refill process around this application. Patients call in their refill orders 24 hours a day and Medical Center administrators subsequently process these orders offline and very efficiently.

Taking technology combining a step further, bring in ShoreTel Innovation Network alliance member Mutare and their voice-to-text software. Mutare’s software can be used to translate voice form messages into text files that, in turn, can be processed to automatically create printed mailings, emails, or other written responses to requests – all without involving a single manual step!

Imagine the advantages of such a solution for a city visitors’ bureau that fields a large volume of phone requests for information every day. Automating responses to routine requests ensures that valuable human resources are applied to tasks not as easily handled by machines.

Since operational efficiency is paramount today’s competitive economy, most businesses cannot afford to *not* use technology to its best advantage and open systems make creative solutions possible.

My participation in panel discussions hosted by Ingate confirmed my belief that a focused security policy around UC is very important to all businesses. Daily reports of hacking and intrusions on the data side of the house no longer even get our attention, and with the rising prominence of SIP trunking as a new attack domain, this is topic that has to be taken seriously. 

Unfortunately the true facts are often covered or downplayed as a hacking incident can have really bad PR consequences for the target company or the equipment vendor through which the breach was accomplished.

One audience member gave an example that within a week of deploying SIP trunks with only a basic “SIP –aware” firewall they had seen their system compromised and costs of several thousand dollars had been run up.

Deploying SIP trunks with an enterprise Session Border Controller (like Ingate’s SIParator), as is common practice with ShoreTel systems, is a key component of a comprehensive UC system security plan.

The Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. is the largest voluntary organization of girls in the world – with a mission to build courage, confidence, and character and make the world a better place. The Girl Scouts of Northern California council includes over 47,000 girls and 32,000 adults.

The Girl Scouts of Northern California council was formed by a merger of five companies. The result was five different phone systems – most of them very old systems – that caused training and support challenges, not to mention the lack of integration. They evaluated many different phone systems and chose a ShoreTel solution, which included phones, ShoreTel Conferencing, ShoreTel VPN concentrator and plan to rollout ShoreTel Mobility.

They have seen many benefits, including:

• Saving money by leveraging ShoreTel conferencing and not having to use an external conference service.
• Ability for staff to stay more connected using ShoreTel features like extension assignment and call forwarding.
• Improved customer service by redesigning many business processes to allow customers to reach the groups they need and to answer all other incoming calls with a live person.
• Voice to text translations to a few mailboxes so they can respond quicker and with the right resource to help customers.

“Probably the biggest benefit we’ve seen is that we now have one system to support the entire company. This has unified our offices and helped our staff stay more connected.”
– Glenn Rogers, CIO, Girl Scouts of Northern California

For many of us we might be familiar with Girl Scouts because of their delicious cookies. Learn more about their 2012 cookie sale. Me – I’m partial to the Thin Mints.

Famed for its technology start-ups, Silicon Valley has a well-established reputation for a no-nonsense way of doing business and lack of corporate baggage, which is similar to ShoreTel’s all-in-one telephony solution that is purpose-built from the ground up for IP. The complexity that plague customers of competitive systems with their various legacy or bolted-together technology, which are inherently complex, are entirely absent from ShoreTel’s Unified Communication solution.

It wasn’t a surprise when an Aberdeen Group study declared ShoreTel’s Unified Communication solution as the easiest to use and the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) in the industry. The unique, open distributed architecture of ShoreTel’s solution integrates seamlessly with existing business applications and processes. Enterprises can scale with ease by simply plugging in an additional switch – without the need to rip and replace infrastructure.

Going a step further, ShoreTel has put its money where it counts most by instituting a lowest TCO guarantee program. If a TCO analysis shows that ShoreTel’s TCO is higher than a competitor’s, it will lower its prices to beat the competition, regardless of the competitor’s price.

ShoreTel operates in an intensely competitive market, batting against highly entrenched players. But by offering brilliantly simple Unified Communication (UC) solutions and by putting the needs of customers ahead of everything, it has disrupted the market. Last year, we grew our customer base to 20,500, and continue to make inroads with enterprise customers.

Since joining ShoreTel in the autumn, I have been on the road mostly – meeting key executives, understanding the concerns of our partners and distributors. One thing that stands out most is the enthusiasm partners, customers, media have for ShoreTel. It is a company that has potential for significant growth and I’m very excited to be at the helm of the EMEA region, helping it expand further.

Smart businesses invest in their voice network in order to achieve savings, improve efficiencies and boost customer satisfaction. If they don’t have a tool that allows the right people to measure, they may not gain all the management benefits they expect. A call accounting system is that tool.

Today, call accounting is much more than assigning a cost to a call record. It is an essential resource that helps a business improve its bottom line by better managing its voice network to:

• Reduce Costs
• Improve Productivity
• Increase Security

By “accounting” for each call and providing insightful management reports, a call accounting system helps a business manager learn what it doesn’t know about its voice network:

• Are customer service calls being processed efficiently?
• Are we spending money for facilities that are not being using?
• Is our network being hacked, abused or misused?

Modern call accounting allows you to listen to your business’ heartbeat – providing visibility into key calling trends, calling expenses, and possible security threats, to name a few benefits.

@Comm is a developer of feature-rich, easy-to-use Call Accounting and Workgroup Reporting solutions, leveraging its 30-year history of innovation, partner and customer support. Additionally, @Comm is a longstanding member of ShoreTel’s Innovation Network, initially validated in 2007 – the program’s inaugural year.

CommView, from @Comm Corporation is a simple-to-use, yet advanced, VoIP Call Accounting and Reporting solution. CommView elevates traditional call accounting reporting by adding ShoreTel Workgroup reporting and traffic analysis reports. CommView reports help users take control of their voice network, enabling them to monitor and manage Telecom expense by department, detect potential abuse, pinpoint fraud or call hacking, and manage employee productivity by department and function.

If you’re already a ShoreTel Reseller, don’t miss @Comm’s upcoming presentation on how call-reporting solutions can help ShoreTel Resellers – as part of the ShoreTel Innovation Network webinar series highlighting Alliance technology partners.

To learn more about ShoreTel and CommView from @Comm, visit the @Comm Innovation Network site.

For years J-W Energy Company had been using a VoIP hybrid architecture and phone systems to provide traditional and Voice over IP (VoIP) services. When their needs outgrew the capability of their current hardware solution, J-W Energy Company explored new IP telephony solutions. The incoming VoIP system would have to integrate with J-W Energy’s highly virtualized IT environment. While solutions from other recognized providers had viable attributes, only ShoreTel offered an opportunity to reduce the total cost of ownership and simplify business communications.

J-W Energy Company selected a ShoreTel Unified Communications Solution including hundreds of ShoreTel IP Phones and licenses, ShoreTel Voice Switches, and ShoreTel Communicator with Professional and Mobile Access. They have become ShoreTel fans and benefits have included:

• 75% reduction of physical telephone lines
• Fast, easy installs
• SIP trunking for transparent VoIP connectivity and cost savings
• Certified VMware Ready partner
• Pervasive anywhere, anytime communications

“ShoreTel provides impressive versatility with an all-in-one solution. We gained a flexible system, a rich feature set, and extensive cost efficiencies.”
- Joel Wolfe, Director of Information Services, J-W Energy Company