Science & Technology 
Science and Technology
Science and Technology 
Tue, March 31, 2009
Mon, March 30, 2009
ShoreTel: ShoreTel 9 Simplifies Personalized Communications for Enterprises of All Sizes
SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - March 30, 2009) - ShoreTel® (
Personalization features, including location-based services and individualized call handling, let users create custom call-routing scenarios to ensure priority callers can always reach them. With ShoreTel 9's high availability, enhanced redundancy and security, and integration with Microsoft Active Directory, enterprises are confidently deploying ShoreTel business phone systems across their organizations. In addition, ShoreTel 9 supports integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007. When Microsoft OCS 2007 is integrated with ShoreTel 7.5 and higher, users of the ShoreTel system can use the Microsoft Office Communicator to manage their ShoreTel phone, view other parties' presence, and exchange instant messages with other Microsoft and ShoreTel users.
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
-- 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.
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