ShoreTel is the innovation leader in delivering IP telephony solutions to the enterprise. The company is privately held and backed by top investors such as Crosspoint Venture Partners, Foundation Capital, J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers and Norwest Ventures. With quarter-over-quarter growth exceeding 100% for five consecutive quarters, ShoreTel has proven itself to be a formidable and pivotal player in the escalating enterprise Voice over IP (VoIP) market.

Products
While competitors modified cumbersome legacy technology or patched together an array of products from different acquisitions to form their telephony products, ShoreTel started from a clean slate. As a result, ShoreTel Smart™ systems are remarkably simple, yet have all the features and reliability expected from a technologically advanced IP telephony solution:

• Distributed intelligence
  With no single point of failure and embedded hardware platforms, ShoreTel systems are extremely reliable. In the unlikely event of a failure, the other ShoreTel devices will continue to operate. They can even assume the functions of the failed device, without affecting the rest of the phone system.
• Single management interface
  A single-view interface means users spend very little effort managing this streamlined system. And because ShoreTel technology requires almost no staff training or support, it saves both time and money.
• Application-rich
  From converged conferencing to unified messaging, distributed customer care to seamless telecommuting, ShoreTel systems let users choose from more than 400 features they can customize with point-and-click simplicity.
• Easy to use
  With a perceptive design and plug-and-play implementation, ShoreTel systems live up to their reputation as the industry's easiest solutions to deploy and use. ShoreTel systems remain flexible, so if companies want to change locations, employees can just pick up their phones and move. The minute the phones are reconnected, ShoreTel Smart systems know who users are and the features they want – automatically.
• Exceptional customer service
  The company has a six-year track record of outstanding customer satisfaction and financial stability. Our network of dedicated partners provides responsive support to hundreds of successful enterprises.
• Data-network independent
  ShoreTel wants its customers to stay with it because they're delighted with the quality of our products, not because they're forced into a closed system. That's why ShoreTel systems integrate with switches and routers from all the leading data vendors. Customers never are faced with costly network upgrades mandated by proprietary vendors.
• Phenomenal clarity
  Mature IP telephony is a stable communications platform today. Users and their callers won't be able to tell the difference between phone calls over traditional landlines or phone calls over the local and wide area network.
• Simple expansion capability
  Standalone or integrated solutions easily expand up or down, automatically seeking and enabling new locations. Users' in-house IT experts can add phones, change extensions, alter voice mail and reconfigure options without help. And if they need a hand, ShoreTel's knowledgeable network of partners can aid in installing new systems and enabling branch offices.
• Smooth migration path
  Starting with a branch office or corporate headquarters, ShoreTel technology is the easiest way to embrace IP telephony. Start the conversion to this proven technology today and begin to see system-wide savings right away.

ShoreGear Voice Switches
The basic building blocks of the system are ShoreGear voice switches, which are intelligent devices that provide both gateway and call management functionality. ShoreGear voice switches are purpose-built devices that run an embedded, real-time operating system, each delivering 99.999% reliability ensuring dial tone – the most critical business application.
Even more significantly, the call control software is distributed to each and every voice switch, eliminating any single point of failure. In the unlikely event a ShoreGear voice switch does fail, the other switches on the network automatically take on the call-processing load. There is no server involved with the basic telephony, thus the system delivers levels of availability unmatched by even legacy vendors.

And even though there are multiple ShoreGear voice switches distributed to locations across the network, they communicate as peers on the network using an enhanced version of the Sessions Initiation Protocol (SIP). The resulting solution is a single system delivering 100% feature transparency between locations.
ShoreGear voice switches are available in five different models to meet the needs of small, medium and large offices supporting IP phones, analog phones, analog trunks and digital trunks. And since the design is inherently scalable, there are no hardware break points and associated "forklift" upgrades – the system architecture scales infinitely, and the product has been certified to 10,000 ports in a single system.

ShorePhone Telephones
The ShoreTel system supports standards-based IP and analog telephones as well as a soft phone. The beauty of standards-based telephones is that competition will drive prices down, drive quality up and increase choice. IP telephones plug into the Ethernet network and communicate to the call management software on a ShoreGear voice switch using the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP). Analog telephones plug into a ShoreGear voice switch and communicate to directly to the call management software on the associated voice switch.
The ShorePhones are highly functional devices, supporting a complete suite of telephony services including make call, take call, transfer, conference, pickup, park, intercom and multiple line appearance. They are available in a wide range of options supporting caller ID, message waiting and speakerphone.

PSTN
The ShoreTel system connects to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) using ShoreGear voice switches. ShoreGear voice switches support analog trunking (loop start, wink start) as well as digital trunking (T1, T1 PRI and E1 PRI).

ShoreWare Voice Applications
Sitting on the network is a standard server that acts like a storage device for voice mail. The software on the server provides voice mail and automated services without traditional port and storage limitations. Each server can support up to 254 simultaneous calls and storage is limited only by the size of the hard disk. Voice mail servers can be distributed across the network to reduce the bandwidth on the wide area network as well as providing survivable voice mail on a per-site basis. And even though there are multiple servers on the network, they still behave as a single system – reply, forward, broadcast and distribution list are seamless between servers simplifying communications.

ShoreWare Director
ShoreWare Director is a browser-based management interface. From anywhere on the network, the system administrator can launch a Web browser and gain access to ShoreWare Director – the best-in-class management interface. Through one browser, you can manage all the sites, including the PBX, voice mail, automated attendant and desktop applications. ShoreWare Director is hosted on the main voice application server and pushes Web pages out to the system administrator. When a new user is added, the system administrator simply clicks "add new", enters the user's first and last name and hits save. The management software automatically updates the centralized database – allowing for easy backup procedures – and the change is propagated to each and every voice switch, the mailbox is created, the automated attendant dial by name and number is updated, the online directories are updated and the user even gets an email with a URL to download their desktop productivity application! All in seconds.

ShoreTel Call Manager
In addition to a highly functional telephone, each user runs applications on the desktop that integrate with your business process and drive improvements in productivity as well as customer satisfaction. What does this really mean?

• General users get unified messaging so voice mail shows up in their email inbox, desktop call control allows them to control the behavior of their phone, and features like follow me find me allows them to be reached.
• Operators or executive assistants get online directories and constant presence information to connect calling parties with the right person quicker and help collaborate with key staff.
• Contact center agents and supervisors can choose from a suite of products that allow them to be the most productive as well as deliver on customer service targets.

ShoreTel Converged Conferencing
ShoreTel Converged Conferencing is delivered on an embedded platform that connects directly to the IP network. Providing audio and data collaboration services, enterprises can drive down the cost of conference services. Converged Conferencing makes your communication with individuals and with groups more effective so you can get the business results you need faster than ever before. For instance, a user on a call can share a document by dragging and dropping the file in the ShoreTel Call Manager application, and the other party is instantly brought to a Web page with the information!

ShoreTel Contact Center
ShoreTel Contact Center solutions provide a suite of applications from basic hunt groups and voice queuing to complete multi-media queuing and skills – based routing of voice, email and chat. The Contact Center solution allows an enterprise to route incoming calls to the most appropriate agent in a multi-site contact center, regardless of location. The solution treats all available agent resources across all sites as one "virtual" contact center. This allows companies to maximize agent productivity, reduce call center costs and boost customer satisfaction level. Request More Information