* ShoreTel 10 features additional SIP capabilities, T.38 fax integration and enhancements to multi-site capabilities
ShoreTel had two announcements this week. The company has released its latest product version with ShoreTel 10, offering extended Microsoft Exchange 2007 including enhanced Session Initiation Protocol capabilities, T.38 fax integration and enhancements to multi-site capabilities. In the second announcement, the company disclosed that its ShoreTel 360 Legacy Migration Program has been successful with a “growing number” of enterprises.
ShoreTel had two announcements this week. The company has released its latest product version with ShoreTel 10, offering extended Microsoft Exchange 2007 including enhanced Session Initiation Protocol capabilities, T.38 fax integration and enhancements to multi-site capabilities. In the second announcement, the company disclosed that its ShoreTel 360 Legacy Migration Program has been successful with a “growing number” of enterprises where ShoreTel front-ends legacy Nortel, Avaya, Cisco, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Mitel and NEC platforms to extend the life of legacy systems as businesses transition to cross-platform unified communications.
As with previous releases, ShoreTel 10 is available as a free upgrade for customers who are on a ShoreTel support contract. The new features include enhanced support for large enterprises with distributed workgroups, paging and account codes; improvements to Microsoft integrations with extended SIP integration for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Messaging; support for Windows 2008 servers; and Symbian and Windows Mobile device support from Nokia and HTC.
Commenting on the ShoreTel cross-platform solutions in a statement, ShoreTel customer Kenton Dolan, system administrator at SEH America said: “We provide new unified communication applications to our employees as we migrate to a pure IP solution over time. ShoreTel’s simplified administration has reduced complexity and support costs immensely. Our employees rave about the new communications applications, resulting in higher productivity, mobility and accessibility.”
In other news this week, Mitel has announced it is becoming a mobile voice and data service provider. According to the company’s statement, “Customers taking advantage of Mitel Mobile will receive similar coverage and benefits associated with any major wireless network services provider, with comparable service-level agreements and device options, along with enterprise-wide bundling with wireline access and UCC features.” Mitel already offers managed wireline services.
Our comments on Mitel: while we don’t expect that Mitel is a competitive threat to the likes of AT&T or Verizon Wireless as a wireless network service provider, it is clear that they do offer an “out of the box” business solution to customers that provides easier integration of Mitel devices and a single point of contact for customer care and support. Hopefully, they won’t enter the AT&T and Verizon TV ad wars featuring 3G coverage maps — we’ve seen enough of those commercials already.
