-- ShoreTel's UC software has already been widely deployed in large
enterprise businesses with thousands of lines, and this milestone release
expands the redundancy, security, and Microsoft Active Directory
integration options that help further an effective UC strategy.
-- The recognized leader in customer satisfaction among UC vendors,
ShoreTel has designed ShoreTel 9 to help enterprises improve customer
satisfaction through rich, multichannel communications that increase
employees' responsiveness to their customers.
-- Enhancements to ShoreWare® Professional Call Manager and ShoreWare
Mobile Call Manager enable all users to personalize their communications to
meet their exact needs.
-- ShoreTel 9 is available as a free upgrade for current customers who
are on a ShoreTel support contract as part of ShoreTel's standard support
service.
NEW FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS
Cost Effective with Low Total Cost of Ownership
-- ShoreTel's unique N+1 distributed architecture provides users with
protection against multiple types of failures to keep critical voice
services up and running. To augment its inherent WAN failure protection,
ShoreTel has extended failover capabilities to allow phones to failover to
a spare ShoreGear® Voice Switch that can be located anywhere in the
network. This enables enterprises to provide extremely high system
availability for all of the voice services equipment distributed throughout
an enterprise, at a fraction of the cost of centralized communications
systems, by deploying a single spare voice switch rather than needing a
separate spare at each location. With ShoreTel N+1 redundancy, active calls
are maintained in the event of a failover, assuring business continuity for
end users, who are never even aware of an issue.
Enterprise Ready
-- Integration with Microsoft Active Directory simplifies and expedites
new user provisioning using ShoreTel's management interface, ShoreWare
Director, and simplifies end-user login to the powerful ShoreWare Call
Manager by using existing network credentials for authentication within
ShoreWare applications.
-- LLDP-MED and 802.1x support helps ensure secure network access and
enhanced device management.
-- Industry standard SRTP/AES encryption helps ensure call privacy, and
is designed to display encrypted call status on ShorePhone® IP Telephones
and ShoreWare Call Manager displays, so users can see at a glance that the
call is secure.
-- Significantly expands the capacity of ShoreTel's Contact Center
Workgroup to now support up to 256 groups, and up to 300 users in a group.
Keeping Mobile Workers Connected to Customers
-- ShoreWare Mobile Call Manager offers location-based services for GPS-
enabled mobile devices, allowing users to automatically select ShoreTel's
Office Anywhere and Call Handling settings. As a result, calls are custom
routed based on the user's location -- at a branch office, home office,
client site, or any other location. Users can ensure that their most
important contacts can always reach them, without having to manually manage
their call handling settings.
-- ShoreWare Mobile Call Manager now supports even more mobile devices,
including new Windows Mobile-based devices, such as the HTC Mogul PPC-6800,
and several new Nokia and BlackBerry models.
-- Personalized call-handling features include call filtering based on a
variety of criteria (phone number, time of day, day of week and more), and
custom routing (e.g. phone number, voicemail, Auto Find Me and more). This
ensures priority callers always get through and eliminates distraction from
lower priority calls.
-- Users now simply select from a list of any of their regular locations
(branch office phone, home office phone, mobile phone, etc.) to serve as
their active extension when using the ShoreTel Office Anywhere feature.
This allows them to receive and place calls as if they were at their desk
from any one of the phones they regularly use.
Enabling Knowledge Workers to Respond Faster
-- Multiparty instant messaging (IM) and tabbed chat let users connect
with multiple people simultaneously, and carry on multiple chats in easy-to-
reach window tabs. This feature helps speed decision making by enabling
users to quickly find answers to questions.
-- The integrated presence change alert feature of ShoreWare Call Manager
enables users to "camp-on" other users' lines when they are busy, and
receive automatic notifications when they become available. This eliminates
the need to play "phone-tag," and wait a long time for answers.
-- ShoreTel has expanded the flexibility of ShoreWare Call Manager with
an open standard-based automatic contact import. In addition to providing
quick access to dial out, and automatic name presentation for inbound
calls, the application now allows users to read an additional contact file,
and provide the same services for those contacts.
-- Support for 64-bit Windows Terminal Server on Windows 2003 Server
enables organizations to drive down hardware costs by using thin clients,
and supports server consolidation initiatives.
QUOTES
Jason McGinnis, president and founder, InfoBunker: "Our goal is to provide
our clients with the most secure, robust and flexible data center
environment attainable, and deliver exceptional service. ShoreTel helps us
achieve this goal with a flexible and secure communications system.
Capabilities such as third-party contact import capabilities, hot desking
from any location, and back-end integration with the MySQL database help us
improve business agility and customer service. Plus, ShoreTel support of
802.1x allows us to walk the talk when it comes to security, and offer our
clients an easy way to establish a secure network and phone communications
while they're visiting our facility."
Kevin Gavin, vice president of marketing, ShoreTel: "ShoreTel 9 delivers
the personalization, high-availability and security capabilities that
enterprises of all sizes need to support the widespread deployment of
ShoreTel business phone systems with integrated unified communications.
ShoreTel has won top customer satisfaction awards year after year, and
ShoreTel 9 further enhances the solution to help a growing number of
enterprises achieve the same great results that have created legions of
raving fans for ShoreTel."
RELATED LINKS & CONVERSATION
-- ShoreTel
Customer Success Stories
-- ShoreTel blog
-- ShoreTel
awards
About ShoreTel, Inc.
ShoreTel, Inc. (Contact Information: Press Contact: Rachel Shelton Eastwick Communications Tel: +650-480-4069 rshelton@eastwick.com
