ShoreTel Phone Systems
ShoreTel is the leading VoIP and UC platform for businesses today that maintain more than a single location. ShoreTel is a single image communications platform that allows companies with 2 or more locations and up to 20,000 users manage a single system, as opposed to managing multiple separate sites. ShoreTel is best known for its reliability, functionality, ease of management, delightful end-user experience, application integration, and for the power it provides “right out of the box”.
Reliability: Is based on “five-9’s of reliability”. The hardware does not have spinning media or hard drives. It maintains only flash-based memory modules. This also allows for less power consumption, and contribution to our landfills. The system only requires a single server that provides for auto attendant, work group and instant messaging. In the event the server goes down, this will not impact call inbound or outbound call control. In the event of a WAN outage, the system will still function 100% by intelligently routing calls through the PSTN.
Functionality: ShoreTel is becoming very well known for its ease of management and ease of use. The system will fully integrate with MS Outlook Exchange, without actually residing on the Exchange server. It does this through a TAPI interface. ShoreTel offers a wide range of phones, desktop or laptop soft phone clients, full integration in mobility for iPhones, iPads, Droids, Smart Phone and Smart Pad technology.
Ease of Management: ShoreTel offers the ShoreWare Director tool so administrators have complete control and ownership of the ShoreTel system. Day to day adds moves and changes can be accomplished by a simple point and click of the mouse, from anywhere the administrator can access the network. Administrators are able to quickly and effectively resolve events while they happen, before they happen or after they happen. The system will notify the administrator by whatever means the administrator has designated. System upgrades can be performed by you or by us, and can be accomplished across multiple locations simultaneously.
Voice Mail Ports: ShoreTel offers 254 ports of simultaneous voice mail, right out of the box. Competitive platforms require that voice mail ports be added incrementally, and there are hefty fees associated with these added components; not to mention added complexity.
ShoreTel maintains the same architecture and components for all deployments. Whether you have a small business need with a single location and 5 phones, or your need is large enterprise with multinational locations, 20,000 users, and custom application integration requirements, the architecture is the same.
From a competitive position, ShoreTel only requires a switch and phones for any locations outside of the HQ location, and these devices are part of the single image architecture, meaning that all sites can be managed and will function as a single site. Competitive platforms require multiple servers, switches, modules, software, licensing, etc., as well as they must reside on the Exchange server as part of their integration capability. This makes for greater complexity and increased management, which equates to significant added expense. Competitive platforms also require that each location be managed and upgraded separately. Upgrades take many hours, as well as result in increased system downtime.
ShoreTel is single image, which means that each location is treated and behaves as one location, and upgrades can be performed simultaneously across the network, requiring much less time to perform the upgrade, and more importantly, minimizing the actual downtime needed for the upgrade. All of these benefits create a much lower TCO of your system.