ShoreTel Attracts Growing List of Government and Education Customers

By Anil Sharma, TMCnet Contributor

ShoreTel (News - Alert) has recorded a significant growth in the government and education verticals, with public-sector business now accounting for approximately 20 percent of ShoreTel’s overall sales results.

Officials with ShoreTel said that for the past two years, the company has seen close to a 60 percent growth in business in this segment and has added hundreds of new customers from the government and education verticals.

“Times are tough right now for public sector customers struggling with reduced budgets and fewer resources,” said Troy Parish, national director, GOV Programs at ShoreTel, Inc., in a statement. “Effectively implementing newer, cutting-edge technology is now a critical element in helping government and education customers do more with less.”

“Public Sector customers are a very loyal bunch and when they find a good product, they enjoy sharing those solutions with peers from neighboring jurisdictions,” Parish added. “These customers are realizing they have an alternative to complexity, and that choice is ShoreTel.”

"The City of Sioux Falls has been running on the ShoreTel phone system for over six years now and we have been very happy. ShoreTel is an easy-to-manage, very flexible phone system with lots of features,” said Jon Klemme, IT Manager of City of Sioux Falls.

“We are able to combine more than 20 remote city sites onto one phone system across fiber, leased lines, and point-to-point wireless, giving us four-digit dialing and presence information at all sites. The integration of Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook contacts into the ShoreTel personal call manager is a feature our users would never give up," said Klemme.

ShoreTel, Inc. is the provider of brilliantly simple Unified Communication (UC) solutions based on its IP business phone system.

TMCnet in February reported that ShoreTel has signed a strategic agreement with converged communications integrator NSC Group, a key partner of rival IP telephony provider, Avaya, which could prove interesting in the long run.

Under the terms of the agreement between NSC and ShoreTel, NSC will sell the ShoreTel’s full UC suite of enterprise IP phone solutions to mid- and large -size companies in Australia and New Zealand. The agreement is the result of a joint customer deployment between the two companies valued at $200,000.