ShoreTel is not the biggest of the VoIP/unified communications system vendors. It is a player, however. The company, which introduced a major platform revision last week, is working to increase its profile. Site Editor Carl Weinschenk with ShorTel Vice President of Marketing Kevin Gavin about a wide range of issues, including ShoreTel 11, the company's recent partners' conference, perhaps most significantly, the success it is having when it competes with other vendors for deals. 
The battle lines remain drawn: It's the network folks against the desktop folks and, to some extent, Cisco against all comers. The stage on which the UC drama is playing out is changing quickly, however, with advanced video platforms, mobile devices and a never-ending stream of new applications. 
In many ways, the contact center is the most natural place for UC. Two recent columns explore this area, and make the point that reaching out effectively to customers is perhaps the purest use of unified communications. The thing that the contact center deployments lack -- drama -- perhaps is the reason that this use of UC doesn't have a high profile.
During the recession, UC’s main task was improving efficiencies to save money. The slow and steady improvement in the economy is facilitating the next phase, which IntelePeer's Charles Studt says focuses on using UC to proactively generate revenue by connecting with prospects more easily. 
Other companies in the news are Goober Networks, Citrix, Avistar, Acme Packet, Empirix, Avaya, Toshiba, Apple, York Telecom, Cisco, Savvis, Pervasip, Windstream and Global Crossing.
The definition of UC in the contact center differs slightly from the enterprise at large. In a podcast, Empirix Director of Product Marketing Bob Hockman tells site editor Carl Weinschenk that the use of IP in the contact center is evolving and that ongoing testing and maintenance are vital.
Unified Communications Edge Advisory Board member Hyoun Park, the Communications Research Editor in the Information Technology Group at Aberdeen, writes that video is a far more potent tool -- and one that is used far more often -- when it is structured within a unified communications platform. Tying video into UC also paves the way to fast and verifiable ROI, Park contends.
Few areas match up as well as UC and health care. There is great promise both within institutions and as a way to extend benefits to patients in their homes. The challenge is that in many cases these cutting edge applications must be rolled out on legacy infrastructure.
Reliability is a key to any telecommunications or IT initiative. It is vital to keep systems up and running and, if there is a problem, restore service quickly. The challenges could grow in an UC environment, however, as more services and applications sit on a common infrastructure. Unified Communications Edge asked disaster recovery/business continuity experts what questions organizations should pose to vendors and service providers to ensure that the job is being done correctly. Carl Weinschenk
Unified Views
The goal of unified communications is presence-based communications across networks, platforms and devices.Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Stay Connected to
Unified Communications Edge
Copyright © 2010 NarrowCast Group, LLC. All rights reserved.