ShoreTel Completes Interoperability Testing With IBM Sametime Unified Telephony

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - December 14, 2009) - ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated Unified Communications (UC), today announced it has completed interoperability testing with IBM Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) to offer ShoreTel customers the option to access the advanced capabilities of SUT for collaboration and communications.

The ShoreTel UC system is already enjoyed by more than a million end users in organizations of all sizes around the globe. With this validation, ShoreTel extends its feature-rich capabilities to organizations that use IBM SUT client and bridges the gap with seamless integration between the ShoreTel phone system and the IBM Sametime environment. UC features made available with IBM SUT include presence information so end-users can see if a contact is free to take a call, call alerts, and call routing for improved flexibility.

This interoperability testing marks yet another milestone in collaboration between IBM and ShoreTel to deliver UC solutions that offer flexibility, ease of use and efficiency enhancements to organizations of all sizes. In May, ShoreTel showcased its ease of integration with IBM Sametime for enterprise-level UC capabilities and, in July, ShoreTel announced an agreement with IBM to integrate with IBM Lotus Foundations Reach to offer an affordable, self-managed, brilliantly simple UC solution in a box for small and midsize businesses.

"ShoreTel recognizes that every organization has a different approach and a unique roadmap for its UC strategy," said Kevin Gavin, vice president of marketing at ShoreTel. "The ShoreTel UC system already offers this degree of flexibility with ShoreTel Professional Call Manager, but organizations that have already deployed an IBM Lotus Sametime solution with Lotus Sametime Connect across desktops may prefer to standardize on that application, rather than require end users to switch. As a result, organizations can leverage existing IBM investment and reduce their training requirements."

The demand for more efficient and productive communications has triggered major advances in unified communications, which involve the integration of what were once separate silos -- information technology, communications, and application software. A key requirement of successful integration is to enable users to place an audio or video call, exchange instant messages (IM), check a user's presence, or make a conference call -- all through a single integrated interface.

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About ShoreTel, Inc.

ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHOR) is the provider of brilliantly simple Unified Communication (UC) solutions based on its award-winning IP business phone system. We offer organizations of all sizes integrated, voice, video, data, and mobile communications on an open, distributed IP architecture that helps significantly reduce the complexity and costs typically associated with other solutions. The feature-rich ShoreTel UC system offers the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) and the highest customer satisfaction in the industry, in part because it is easy to deploy, manage, scale and use. Increasingly, companies around the world are finding a competitive edge by replacing business-as-usual with new thinking, and choosing ShoreTel to handle their integrated business communication. ShoreTel is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has regional offices in Austin, Texas, United Kingdom, Sydney, Australia and Munich, Germany. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com.

IBM, Lotus, Sametime, and Sametime Unified Telephony are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.

Contact Information: Press Contact: Rachel Shelton Eastwick Communications Tel: +650-480-4069 rshelton@eastwick.com