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ShoreTel 7.5 Adds Mobile Integration |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Friday, 23 November 2007 |
The latest release of ShoreTel's Unified Communications system software
adds a Mobile Call Manager that brings mobile phones into the corporate
communications environment. The company has also launched new hardware
form factors that provide twice the capacity in half the rack space.
The latest hardware also now includes versions that support E1 and BRI
ISDN interfaces in a move that will appeal Australian ISDN users.
Steve Timmerman, VP of
Marketing for ShoreTel was in Australia to help release the new
products and told VoIPnews the new half width hardware could handle
twice as many users as the older switches lowering power
consumption and lowering the configuration space required per
installation by 60 per cent. The ShoreTel architecture, he said is
highly distributed allowing management across the enterprise and
supporting up to 10,000 users. Timmerman also points out that the
architecture allows for N+1 redundancy rather than the Nx2 redundancy
deployments required by its major competitors.
The new
hardware is also 100 percent interoperable with existing ShoreGear
switches, allowing customers to deploy any combination of new and
existing switches without a forklift upgrade.
Using the ASIC based devices, rather than deploying switching onto
Intel servers also adds to the reliability of the systems argued
Timmerman, but the systems are not entirely isolated. The new release
easily integrates with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Timmerman
said the company has a development product for Communications Server
which will hit the streets next year.
On the mobile side, employees that need to stay connected to the
office system can now access Mobile Call Manager - a simplified version
of the desktop client. The mobile client currently only runs on
BlackBerry handsets, but Timmerman says the company is working to
extend
that to other handsets in the New Year. Users can see their Voicemail
and a Call History summary and access their ShoreTel Office Anywhere
functionality that normally lets them take their desktop VoIP with them
to other PCs.
The handset downloads a 10 second snippet of each voicemail message as
a WAV file with the rest of the message being available on demand and
of course you can access the corporate phone directory and change call
handling settings and assign the phone as your extension number. With
the Office Anywhere feature, employees can redirect calls made to their
office extension to their mobile device or any other phone including
their Blackberry. A Quick Dial feature allows mobile users to find and
connect to other people by searching the corporate directory and
personal addressbook, then place the call with a click of a button
while voicemail functionality lets users select which messages to
listen to and in what order, and then even place a call directly from
the voicemail message.
The software upgrade to ShoreTel 7.5 is free of charge to ShoreTel
customers with maintenance contracts. Pricing for the new ShoreTel
switches are 90 user ShoreGear 90BRI: A$5,109 and
the 2209 user ShoreGear 220E1: A$10,089. The ShoreWare Mobile Call Manager is priced
at $128 per user.
www.shoretel.com/products/call_manager/mobile_call_manager.html
www.shoretel.com
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