ShoreTel, IBM partner with UC solution for SMBs

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 16 July 2009 16:31

IT Industry - Strategy

Coombs said the combined solution would 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 says its 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, allowing smaller businesses to expand without worrying about upgrade costs or requirements to purchase additional technology.

Coombs also says that the combined simplicity and autonomic management capabilities of ShoreTel and IBM help eliminate the complexities of UC typically associated with other systems, and, he maintains, “result in a simple, affordable and comprehensive communications solution.

And, according to Caleb Barlow, director, Lotus Foundations, at IBM, 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.”

Barlow said the combined solution from IBM and ShoreTel provided SMBs with a “complete set of communications and collaboration tools that are easy to use and affordable.”
 
Both companies say the agreement represents a significant opportunity for both to gain additional market share in the expanding UC sector, which they say continues to attract major vendors from other IT fields because of its rapidly growing popularity.