The world of business communications and collaboration is changing at lightning speed. And almost every organization can benefit from Integrated Collaboration. These new tools are changing how work gets done and how customers or clients are served. The results are significant savings and efficiencies, as well as the potential for increased business growth.

IC brings a new set of tools to communications. Here are four top technologies:

§  Presence: Software can now show you who is logged into the network, where that person is, whether they are busy (e.g. on the phone, in a meeting, away from their desk, etc.), and if they are available for questions, assignments or collaboration. Presence also helps your employees avoid wasting time on phone calls or landing in voice mail.

§  Instant Messaging (IM): It is now possible to communicate quickly, without the disruption of a phone call, using instant messaging (the office version of texting). Quick IM chats can replace up to 30 percent of internal phone calls. Instant messaging is more flexible too: you can simultaneously IM with more than one person even if they are on the phone (e.g. checking facts while talking to a customer).

§  Virtual Meetings: These meetings are like being at the same table in the same room. These can be one‐on‐one meetings, where you and another person are looking at the same document while you are talking about it. You can even turn on video to be “in the same room.” These can be scheduled group conference calls, just as before, but now you can share presentations or documents, essentially from anywhere on the network.

§  Mobility: You can take these new tools on the road. Just as cell phones took voice calls on the road and smartphones took email on the road, you can now take IC on the road, having presence, IM, and virtual meetings from essentially anywhere.

Check out the white paper for additional information on integrated collaboration.

With the release of ShoreTel 11 come several changes to the ShoreTel system, including a name change of ShoreTel Call Manager to ShoreTel Communicator. The release simplifies integration with existing IT infrastructure and legacy PBX systems.

But perhaps the most exciting new offering with the ShoreTel 11 release is support for the iPhone. The ShoreTel Communicator platform is now supported on the iPhone, allowing access to the user interface of communicator.Other SmartPhones that are platforms for ShoreTel Communicator include: BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Curve and Samsung Blackjack II.The ShoreTel Communicator for iPhone app, available in the iPhone App Store, has many features including:

• View, listen and call back from ShoreTel voicemail box
• Access to and call back from call history
• Presence and preferred call handling settings
• Allows you to assign your ShoreTel extension to your iPhone
• Dialing to iPhone contacts
• Allows you to hide your iPhone number when calling out

With mobile apps, ShoreTel is becoming even more “brilliantly simple.”Want to know more about how ShoreTel 11 works on the iPhone? Download the iOS App. 

 

A recent article from CRN listed the movers and shakers of 2010 and ShoreTel was one of companies recognized.

Review the points noted below and click on this link if you would like to see the other notables from 2010: CRN website

ShoreTel And Agito, October 2010

It was a big year for scrappy UC player ShoreTel, which, among several major events, gained a new CEO, and made a game-changing acquisition of Agito Networks, dramatically upping its stake in the mobility space.

Agito, founded in 2006, focuses on UC products that can integrate with an enterprise's existing PBX infrastructure to enable voice calls over VoIP connections, reduce calling costs and make international mobile communications less cumbersome. What's especially interesting -- and potentially huge for ShoreTel channel partners looking for flexible mobile UC solutions -- is that ShoreTel is going to keep the Agito technology vendor-agnostic, including PBX and UC support for both ShoreTel systems and those of its many competitors.

While much has been written about Miller’s Magical Number Seven, ShoreTel’s seventh year in a row as Best Overall Telephony Provider in the Nemertes PilotHouse Award annual benchmark is only just making news.

But it’s big news.

For seven consecutive years, ShoreTel has gone up against industry giants, such as Cisco, Avaya and Mitel, and won.

And we’ve won because our customers say so, not because of our size, or our “influence,” or our spread across the industry. Nemertes is an independent research firm that surveys IT professionals and determines the results exclusively on their views and experience.

This year, our customers put us ahead by a massive majority. ShoreTel’s overall score was 4.22, while Cisco trailed behind with the next highest score of 3.90.

And in each of the areas rated—technology, customer service and value—we beat out the competitors and gained in standing.

For a helpful overview of the IP telephony market today and the ratings of all major vendors, download this year’s Nemertes report.

In an attempt to battle unnecessary and costly complexity, ShoreTel has begun an anti-complexity movement for the IP Telephony industry.

ShoreTel has denounced the way vendors commonly piece together solutions from several different proprietary technologies, creating higher long-run costs. Although it protects the vendors’ positions and creates a continuous revenue stream, it's a practice far more complex and costly to consumers.

Instead, ShoreTel has worked towards removing complexity from its system, engineering a solution for optimized IP-based communication and collaboration. It includes simple management and end-user features integrating voice, video, data, and mobile communication, and by reducing complexity, costs go down, as well as total cost of ownership

"ShoreTel’s 'Brilliantly Simple' campaign is resonating with both customers and channel partners," says UCStrategies co-founder and UC Expert Blair Pleasant. "The ShoreTel channel partners I’ve spoken with are very favorable toward the ShoreTel solution and lack of complexity, noting that the product is easy to purchase, implement, and use, but is full featured and well designed."

ShoreTel's campaign has developed some videos that attack Cisco brand, even camouflaging their logo, www.shoretel.com/simplify.html,  bold.

There is more to come.

 

Report Focuses Heavily on Customer Experience and Product Offering

ShoreTel® the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), announced it has received a "Strong Positive" rating in Gartner's April 2010 "MarketScope for Unified Communications for the SMB Market, North America." The report's weighted rating system focuses most heavily on the customer experience and the capabilities, quality, and feature set of the product.

Kevin Gavin, Vice President of Marketing, ShoreTel, said "We believe this report and our ‘Strong Positive' rating confirms our position in the market and our commitment to providing our customers with the industry's best features, reliability, and service. From small companies to large enterprises, it's clear that when customers share their experiences, ShoreTel's true leadership shines."