A Look Back at 2009: ShoreTel Strides Ahead

For many, 2009 was a year of turbulence. The worst economic recession in decades, coupled with a transformation from TDM PBXs to pure IP switching, has forever reshaped the competitive landscape. Nortel, once a telecom giant, is bankrupt and sold off, and the shakeup continues as new vendors look to enter the unified communications marketplace.

Despite economic uncertainty, ShoreTel was among the few to continue a strong growth path, and the company is well positioned for even greater growth in 2010 and beyond. Brilliant simplicity and low total cost of ownership are fueling ShoreTel's momentum in the IP communications market, making ShoreTel one of the most popular and fastest growing UC providers in the world. ShoreTel's IP phone system offers advanced features and capabilities that help organizations boost productivity and customer service—all based on a highly available and easy-to-manage platform.

Raving Fans at Home and Abroad

In today's communications-intensive and cost-pressured world, organizations need flexible, easy-to-use and easy-to-manage communications tools that help them deliver a strong competitive advantage to their customers. That's why ShoreTel's fan base is growing in force. ShoreTel surpassed its ten-thousandth enterprise customer in 2009, and was named the most popular desktop application among small and midsize businesses by Synergy Research. ShoreTel deployments are popular across multiple verticals, ranging from the education market to sports organizations to the government sector. New customers include the San Francisco Giants, the City of Richmond, Calif., Hildalgo County, Texas, ReadyPac, Marvin Windows & Doors, and City of Lakewood, Colo.

"The costs to Hidalgo County for the phone system went down from about $900,000 a year in 2002, to about $400,000 a year since deployment in 2006," said Renán Ramirez, Chief Information Officer for Hidalgo County in Texas. "These massive savings are because now we can handle changes in-house, and make calls through the network using ShoreTel's least cost call routing feature, instead of having to go long distance across the county."

ShoreTel also is growing in popularity in Europe and Asia-Pacific, as the company continues to invest in international expansion. ShoreTel has more than 100 partners in Europe, and this year added resources in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland, as well as the United Kingdom. ShoreTel also expanded its presence in Australia and New Zealand, with more than seven new partners in those regions.

ShoreTel's brilliantly simple UC system continues to earn industry recognition. ShoreTel was named Best IP Telephony Provider for the sixth year in a row in the Nemertes PilotHouse Awards. Unique in the industry, Nemertes bases its results entirely on the experiences of IP-telephony decision-makers. The awards rated 39 IP telephony vendors and included 1,393 participants. ShoreTel has scored at the top in every ratings category since Nemertes began tracking IP-telephony vendor performance six years ago.

ShoreTel also ranked number 228 on the Technology Fast 500, Deloitte LLP's ranking of 500 of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America. Rankings are based on percentage of fiscal year revenue growth during the five-year period from 2004 to 2008. ShoreTel grew 584 percent during this period.

The Secret is Brilliant Simplicity

ShoreTel continued to advance its state-of-the-art UC system this year, which help customers boost their productivity, deliver better customer service and save money. Milestones include being the first UC vendor to achieve interoperability with Skype, comprehensive UC and collaboration offerings, and putting virtual call centers within reach.

Interoperability with Skype for SIP gives ShoreTel customers the opportunity to save money, save time and stay ahead by integrating Skype into their communications portfolios. ShoreTel business customers can receive inbound calls through their ShoreTel SIP-enabled UC system from more than 400 million registered Skype users around the world at no cost to the Skype user.

Organizations using ShoreTel can reduce their costs by directing outbound calls from devices connected to the ShoreTel UC system via Skype for SIP to landlines and mobile phones at low Skype rates. Check it out! It's now in beta.

ShoreTel continues to focus on comprehensive unified communication and collaboration. Integration with Lotus Foundations gives SMBs an integrated solution for presence awareness, instant messaging and VoIP telephony. With Lotus Foundations, ShoreTel customers can customize and extend their IBM Sametime UC and collaboration capabilities.

Organizations can dramatically improve customer service and sales workflows with ShoreTel Contact Center 5. With ShoreTel Contact Center 5, organizations can make virtual call centers a reality while increasing agent responsiveness as it's one of the easiest solutions on to use and administer in the industry, and ideal for organizations that need a highly available, scalable, sophisticated call center. Self-service capabilities enable customers to perform tasks such as reviewing billing options and checking balances, while retaining the ability to reach a live agent.

Finally, ShoreTel continues its commitment to open standards with the release of the ShoreTel Web Service SDK for the creation of advanced, integrated applications. Developers can use the SDK to simplify UC component integration by building advanced integrated applications on ShoreTel's open system to foster increased collaboration, bolster productivity and reduce costs.

The IP communications landscape has changed. ShoreTel continues to ring in the new era with a brilliantly simple business communication solution designed to untangle IT complexity, reduce costs and boost productivity in the IP age.