shoretel

www.shoretel.com

ShoreTel-An Enriched Voice Experience for Enterprise Users

ShoreTel is an unquestionable leader of the IP PBX Industry. The end User experience is so rich and facilitating that it is a true VON 2.0 System.

IT Administrators rave about this system for its ease of Administration and Maintenance . The feature set is rich and comprehensive. ShoreTel has gained such a name in the Industry that it is leaving no room for middle players and the so called heavy weights are trembling when ShoreTel is in fray.

ShoreTel started in 1996, when VOIP was still early days and has not even completely evolved out of the Computer Telephony. One of the factors for the success story of this Silicon Valley Company can be attributed to the hybrid approach it brought in to the migration of the PBX Industry . Shoregear switches have a cutting edge packet switching fabric and are compliant with the major VOIP signaling protocols and at the same time have all the legacy TDM protocols built in to connect with the existing infrastructure. The ShoreTel IPVoice Messaging has AMIS and SMDI components built in as well.This facilitates the gradual migration of the existing legacy Telephony system to the ShoreTel System . The IT Administrators and end users can have both the systems side by side and they can have time to adapt to the new system , before they eventually migrate.One lesson from this success story is that an Hybrid approach is guaranteed for success. This gives users learning time before they realize that even all the time tested and good things need to make over for the futuristic concepts.

Interview with Ed Basart, Founder, CTO, ShoreTel Inc.

VN: Ed, Congratulations on the successful IPO and a great first quarter as a public company.

Ed: The lesson is simple: Follow your vision and never give up.

VN: ShoreTel has a niche market among the SME Customers. Are there plans to grow into more Verticals?

Ed: We observe that we are increasing in the number of verticals. A few years ago one could only pick out 2 or 3. There are half a dozen or more now. We are strongest in services organizations, education, financial services and professional services. We also see increased buying by large enterprises, which are those above 400 users.

VN: Are there plans to go into Asian Markets?

Ed: We are entering Asia selectively. We have offices in Hong Kong, Sydney, and Singapore with distributors in those countries plus New Zealand. Both Asia Pacific and Europe are areas we expect to grow much faster than in the U.S.

VN : Does ShoreTel offer professional services for System Integration with Third Party CRM Systems?

Ed: Yes. We’ve been successful with our SalesForce.Com integration and recently integrated with Microsoft CRM and are in trials.

VN: Opensource Telephony is growing, but VON20 believes that it affects hosted VOIP market more than the IP PBX market. What is your opinion?

Ed: My sense is that open source is attractive for those wanting applications that integrate with their business and have a small budget. There seems to be a viable cottage industry in the space. I have no idea if it affects the hosted market more than the enterprise market. I have very little visibility into the hosted market other than that space does not seem to be very healthy right now.

VN: What is your message to VON20

Ed: I’m ready for my face shot for the cover of Von20 magazine. ShoreTel is the only public pure-play enterprise IP telephony in existence. I wonder why Pulver keeps putting loser after loser on the cover, when they could have me for cheap

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