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ShoreTel: ShoreTel Announces Agreement to Integrate With IBM Lotus Foundations Reach to Bring Comprehensive Unified Communicati

^{Published on 2009-07-15 06:42:05, Last Modified on 2009-07-15 06:42:18 - Market Wire}
 

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - July 15, 2009) - [ ShoreTel® ] (NASDAQ: [ SHOR ]), the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated Unified Communications, today announced an agreement with IBM (NYSE: [ IBM ]) to deliver a unique unified communications (UC) and collaboration offering that combines a small business appliance, presence awareness, instant messaging and VoIP telephony in an "out-of-the-box" integrated solution for small and midsize businesses (SMB).

The ShoreTel offering leverages the newly announced Lotus Foundations Reach, which customizes and extends the IBM Sametime UC and collaboration capabilities, in an appliance designed for SMBs that does not require an enterprise administrator. The result is designed to be a tightly integrated solution that delivers on ShoreTel's commitment to brilliantly simple solutions and lets SMB customers quickly realize the productivity gains and simplicity associated with UC solutions. The combined solution will bring enterprise-class reliability, rapid scalability and lower IT costs to the SMB market that frees them from vendor lock-in and upgrade requirements.

ShoreTel's easy-to-use IP telephony will connect to Lotus Foundations Reach to provide an all-in-one integrated communications and collaboration solution. ShoreTel takes advantage of the self-managing capabilities of the Lotus Foundations appliance to further simplify deployment and reduce costs for smaller businesses that often have limited IT resources and skills. The combined simplicity and autonomic management capabilities of ShoreTel and IBM help eliminate the complexities of UC typically associated with other systems, and result in a simple, affordable and comprehensive communications solution.

"IBM and ShoreTel are putting the cost savings and productivity gains of unified communications and collaboration within reach of even the smallest businesses," said Phil Salm, IBM software solutions specialist for technology solutions reseller, CDW. "With Lotus Foundations Reach and ShoreTel telephony, small businesses can afford this comprehensive communications solution without sacrificing in terms of quality and features. Additionally, the simplicity of installation and ongoing operation will result in a quick ROI for customers."

Under the agreement, ShoreTel plans to integrate the IBM Lotus Foundations platform with the intuitive ShoreTel Director Management platform in a single "office in a box" appliance. ShoreTel's use of open standards leverages IBM's standard-based software to easily extend its telephony solutions to help increase employee productivity, speed business processes and reduce overall costs. This open approach also allows smaller businesses to expand without worrying about upgrade costs or requirements to purchase additional technology.

ShoreTel is adding its popular UC features, such as telephony presence, click to call, unified messaging and a single management console for voice applications, to the UC and collaboration capabilities of Lotus Foundations Reach. The result is an out-of-the-box solution that houses all of a user's communications tools, including e-mail, calendars, contacts, office productivity tools, network security, remote access, file and print sharing, and instant messaging, in one place to improve the overall user experience.

"The combined IBM and ShoreTel solution provides us with a comprehensive unified communications and collaboration offering designed specifically for our small and midsized businesses," said Michael Reed, president, NextiraOne Mexico. "With capabilities such as e-mail, instant messaging and telephony, our SMB customers will have access to the communications tools needed to effectively run their businesses all rolled into one affordable and easy to manage offering."

"Just this year, over 1,000 Microsoft partners have turned to IBM Lotus Foundations as a simple, fast to deploy and inexpensive alternative to Microsoft Small Business Server and Essential Business Server," said Caleb Barlow, director, Lotus Foundations, IBM. "The combined solution from IBM and ShoreTel provides SMBs with a complete set of communications and collaboration tools that are easy to use and affordable."

The agreement represents a significant opportunity for both companies to gain additional market share in the expanding UC sector, which continues to attract major vendors from other IT fields because of its rapidly growing popularity.

"Working with IBM, we're taking the next step in bringing unified communications to organizations of all sizes, with a solution that combines ShoreTel's IP telephony expertise and experience with IBM's collaborative technology," said John W. Combs, president and CEO at ShoreTel. "Together, we plan to offer SMBs easy-to-manage, efficient and cost-effective tools with the advanced collaboration and communications capabilities that until now have only been accessible to large enterprises."

RELATED LINKS & CONVERSATION

-- [ ShoreTel on Blog Talk Radio ]

-- [ ShoreTel blog ]

-- [ ShoreTel Twitter handle ]

-- [ ShoreTel awards ]

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 ].

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the federal securities laws, including, without limitation, statements by John W. Combs. The forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. The risks and uncertainties include the company's ability to successfully integrate its products with IBM technology and other risk factors set forth in ShoreTel's Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2008 and its 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2009. ShoreTel assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements included in this release.

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