ShoreTel and IBM: Mighty UC goes mainstream for SMBs

Small businesses need mighty tools. That's because small and midsize businesses (SMBs) must be more nimble than their larger counterparts to respond to and capture new opportunities. But all too often, the technologies that SMBs need to be competitive are too costly, too complex and demand highly skilled resources to manage and maintain.

ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations breaks that mold. ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations is a powerful and highly reliable collaboration and unified communication (UC) solution designed to work "out of the box" with limited or no in-house IT resources. With a built-in self-healing and self-management features, SMBs gain fingertip access to modern IT and UC tools — from email and calendar features to firewall protection, and instant messaging and presence awareness to backup and archiving capabilities. The result is huge productivity gains and cost savings as SMBs can improve support for distributed work teams, reduce employee travel, and cut telecom costs.

ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations is a powerful and highly reliable collaboration and unified communications solution for SMBs limited or no in-house IT resources.

"ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations platform can be installed and configured quickly by trusted IT service providers," explained Jerome Joanny, Director of Product Integration, ShoreTel. "The system automatically maps to its environment, and self-management and self-healing capabilities let organizations stay focused on running the business, not fiddling with the underlying IT infrastructure. No specialized skills or training is required to run the solution, which saves time and money."

The combined solution leverages the power of the IBM and ShoreTel partnership. The solution is tightly integrated, which makes it simple for organizations to quickly benefit from the types of UC and collaboration tools once only accessible to large enterprises. SMBs don't have the headache of trying to stitch together discrete point products; instead they can be confident that the open, integrated solution from ShoreTel and IBM is virtually plug and play.

"Reliability also is something very important to SMBs in the always-on world," Joanny added. "With ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations, just like the ShoreTel UC system itself, reliability is built-in. ShoreTel hardware is designed with no moving parts, other than a fan, and has a mean time between failure rate of about 15 years. N+1 redundancy and automatic load sharing further extend system reliability to 99.999 percent. Other business continuity features such as an integrated firewall, anti-virus and data protection and a reliable Linux-based OS help ensure high availability."

As ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations expand into beta trials, some businesses already are experiencing the benefits of powerful yet affordable UC tools. "A large part of our business is conducted via telephone or through electronic communication like email, IM, and through interfaces such as portals and Web conferencing. The ShoreTel and IBM Foundations integrated solution not only provides us with the continuity of communication essential to our business, but it has reduced our ongoing costs and greatly enhanced the way we communicate," said Douglas Henderson, President of Envision Solutions, a systems integrator. "Although we are a small company, we have the same needs and expectations from our IT infrastructure as any large company. The ShoreTel and IBM Foundations solution has provided us with all these capabilities in a solution that is simple enough for us to manage without outside help and at a price that actually reduces our operational costs."

For more information on ShoreTel For IBM Lotus Foundations or to request to join the ShoreTel For IBM Lotus Foundations beta program email fieldtrials@shoretel.com