NZ ShoreTel partners embrace virtualised unified communications

ShoreTel has noted Australia and New Zealand Customers are embracing virtualised unified communications (UC).

Earlier this year, ShoreTel released its current UC platform, ShoreTel 14.2, which allows companies to deploy a communications system in a virtual environment.

Businesses can manage their communications systems with a single web based management interface and a single network, and can use both hardware based and virtual appliances.

Emma McCormack, ShoreTel, Marketing Director, APAC, says with 14.2 customers can select the UC deployment model that suits their business and infrastructure needs, whether that is virtual, physical or a combination.

Frederic Gillant, ShoreTel, vice president and managing director, APAC, says since its global release, ShoreTel's partners in Australia and New Zealand have responded well to 14.2.

"Our partners have really embraced the new capabilities and opportunities that a virtualised communications presents for their business," says Gillant.

"It's enabled ShoreTel partners to deliver new technical offerings, and also opened up greater business opportunities for partners to offer cloud-based and managed hosting solutions," he says.

McCormack says with the UC platform offers businesses cost savings and less downtime. This is due to the fact it can reduce hardware and operational complexity with server consolidation, have higher application availability, and increased scalability and reliability, she says.

Lawrence Chua, Ricoh, head of managed IT services, says, "We are a channel for both VMware and ShoreTel, and we've recently decided to virtualise our own unified communications by deploying a virtualised ShoreTel solution on VMware.

On the reasoning behind the decision, he says, "We want to reduce our infrastructure costs by consolidating our servers and this will also have the added benefit of improving our business continuity and capabilities through the provision of high availability deployment.