ShoreTel (News - Alert) Inc., one of the top providers of business VoIP phone systems, has announced new enhancements to its award-winning IP telephony software. ShoreTel 7 now offers even simpler system administration, as well as new productivity-enhancing features. In addition, the company has added four new switches to its line of hardware.

One of the key improvements to ShoreTel v7 is “escalation notification,” which allows a system administrator to define whether an incoming call should ring through to certain devices - and in what order - before switching over to voicemail. For example, an administrator can program this feature so that a user’s incoming calls ring on each number for a specified period of time before switching to the next phone or device, and finally before switching to voicemail. As such, the administrator can establish an endless “loop” of ring-throughs, thus creating a “must respond” pattern for incoming calls. This helps ensure that important calls get through when they need to. Best of all, the software sports a new “Auto Find Me” feature which can be toggled on and off by the user – and when it is turned on, the incoming caller does not have to dial “1” to send the call on to other end-devices - rather, it occurs automatically.

Another productivity enhancing feature is the ability for the administrator to customize the desktop calling interface with programmable buttons which can be tailored to meet the needs of each specific user. These buttons basically emulate the buttons which are found on the company’s IP phones - only they’re designed for ShoreTel’s Personal Call Manager (PCM) desktop client and thus can do a lot more. Each button can be programmed to call a certain individual, group, or office - or transfer a call - plus they can be used to launch websites and software or to quickly view call history reports or other data. With this new feature, the PCM can display up to nine “toolbars,” each with up to 25 buttons. This can be handy for receptionists, sales executives and, particularly, call center agents who need the ability to quickly transfer calls, or make quick contact with other departments or individuals – or who need to the ability to quickly find and launch software and/or websites with a single click of a mouse. Furthermore, this feature gives agents the choice of using either their regular agent interface or the PCM, which now integrates some commonly used contact center actions.

Adding to ease of management is a new voicemail feature which gives managers the ability to set how long voicemails are saved on the system, as well as a new alert for the end user indicating how much room is left in their voice mailbox. Also making things simpler is the addition of Web-based call detail record (CDR), which allows for export of CDR via serial port in order to support legacy reporting packages.

“There are lots of customers who replaced their phone system but loved their reporting package - and some of those reporting packages require this type of data transmittal protocol,” said Steve Timmerman, ShoreTel’s VP of marketing.

Version 7 also includes a new User Import Tool, which Timmerman said “is the first step in our road map of full LDAP active directory support.”

“What this does is allow block, offline updates via an Excel spreadsheet,” he explained. “So if you can get the information by exporting it from active directory to a CSV file, or importing it from a different database to a CSV file, you can then make a batch upload to ShoreTel. It is not a complete integration but it is a good head start - and we’re going to provide the complete integration over the next couple of releases.”

In addition to these software enhancements, ShoreTel has increased the density and reduced the footprint of its IP switches – as well as adding four new switches. Two of these new switches are the ShoreGear 50 and ShoreGear 90, which support up to 50 and 90 users, respectively (all of the company’s switch models are denote the number of lines they support). As Timmerman explained, these new switches were added to provide increased granularity for ShoreTel’s partners, as well as its customers, which are predominantly small to medium sized businesses. They basically “fill in the gaps” in the company’s existing line of switches, which include support for 40, 60 or 120 users. In addition, Timmerman said the new switches use much less power and sport improved heat dissipation – meaning they result in lower electricity bills and last longer. This, he pointed out, equates to lower cost of ownership. ShoreTel has also launched two new switches which support both IP phones and digital trunks in the same box – the ShoreGear 220T1 and ShoreGear 220E1. With this new, expanded line of switches, customers can better match the right box for a specific location. Furthermore, the reduced footprint is an advantage for companies which are tight on rack space.

Also coinciding with the release of ShoreTel v7 is the unveiling of the company’s new IP 8000 conference phone. This sleek new conference phone – which looks like a black Frisbee (or flying saucer?) has16 microphones embedded into it – thus eliminating the need for external mikes. According to Timmerman, the array of microphones, which is arranged around the circumference of the phone and thus provides 360 degrees of coverage, uses “beamforming” technology, as opposed to “gating” technology, which means the microphones aren’t triggered by sound and turn “on” and “off” the way they do on most conference phones (this can lead to small breaks in the sound). With advanced noise canceling algorithms to cancel noise from light fixtures, projectors and BlackBerrys (etc.), plus a titanium speaker, this conference phone delivers the very best in sound quality.

These improvements all build on ShoreTel’s unique system architecture – an architecture which Timmerman said has earned the company market share which is just below that of the leading IP Telephony vendors, including Cisco, Avaya (News - Alert) and Nortel (this based on recent research from Synergy showing that ShoreTel has gained market share in the IP phones category, and ranking it just below these three major players in that category in terms of US sales).Timmerman also pointed to recent data from Nemertes Research showing that ShoreTel beats these competitors in terms of customer satisfaction.

“ShoreTel’s entire value proposition flows from its distinctive architecture,” Timmerman said. “It’s a switch-based platform – you know, all vendors use servers for applications, contact center, conference bridge, etc. – but we’re unique in having a switch - so it’s an embedded operating system - with only flash memory and no disk drive. And our dial tone and all call handling is based on that switch – that hardened appliance – as opposed to a server.”

This distributed software architecture, he said, means “all the intelligence in the system is actually rippled across all nodes of the network – and each side is able to function independently if the WAN goes down. In fact, switches can be backed up with one additional switch – so if you have five switches, you can back up all five with just one additional switch.”

“Our core architecture is really the cornerstone of the company,” Timmerman said. “And we’re always looking to see how we can continue to enhance reliability – both on the hardware side and on the application side – without sacrificing ease of system management. You know, you can build a highly reliable system with another vendor’s equipment – but you tend to spend more money because you’re doing it ‘one-to-one’ – plus you’re creating complexity in the system management. Our goal is to make it highly reliable - but make it cost effective - without multiple systems, back-ups and stand-bys that need to be synchronized properly.”

ShoreTel 7 is available now and the software upgrade is free of charge to customers with maintenance contracts (upgrades of ShoreTel’s system can be handled remotely via a single browser-based interface). Pricing for the new ShoreTel switches is as follows: ShoreGear 50 ($2,695); ShoreGear 90: ($4,195); ShoreGear 220T1: ($7,995); and ShoreGear 220E1: ($7,495).

--------

Patrick Barnard is Assignment Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.