ShoreTel Opens New Avenues for Innovation with Expansion of Partner Program

ShoreTel (News - Alert), a provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), has opened new avenues for innovation with the expansion of its technology partner program.

The creation of a single, holistic program simplifies participation for technology partners and developers to deliver advanced integrated solutions to customers, said ShoreTel officials.

“Today's organizations increasingly rely on best-of-breed business process solutions to remain competitive and to ensure efficient operations,” said Brian Spencer, president of OAISYS (News - Alert), a leading provider of call recording and contact center management solutions and long-time participant in both the ShoreTel Technology Partner Program and Developer Network, in a statement.

Spencer said that ShoreTel's support of open standards gives customers the ability to easily incorporate business critical applications within their communications systems.

“People often undervalue open API capabilities. But for us, ShoreTel’s open API platform was a big deal because we have so many custom-built applications and need to ensure flawless integration,” said Dan Lyddy, vice president of information systems for DART Transit Company, one of hundreds of ShoreTel customers leveraging the open platform.

“Now we have 322 people using ShoreTel Communicator with Workgroup Agent access,” said Lyddy. “My team built a widget on the back of ShoreTel Workgroups to eliminate the wait time for drivers to talk to staff, instead initiating a call-back request. That means the ShoreTel system will automatically send our agents a prompt to call the driver back once that agent completes the current phone call.”

Officials with ShoreTel said that through this new, unified program, the company’s technical experts support customers, systems integrators, technology providers and software developers in building advanced integrated applications on the company’s open platform using commonly known and widely accepted techniques.

Application developers and member partners collaborate freely, then offer hardware, software and services that together greatly enhance and enrich communications across the enterprise and deliver on the promise of Voice over IP.

“As a Strategic ShoreTel Innovation Network partner, we are able to deliver complete business solutions to our end customers and provide maximum value to joint customers,” said Patric Chang (News - Alert), director of strategic alliances at Brocade.

Chang said that in this growing community of innovators, network members benefit from co-marketing activities that drive exposure of value-added software, hardware and service solutions.

He said that customers enjoy productivity-enhancing solutions developed by best-in-class technology providers who share ShoreTel's commitment to customer satisfaction.

Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Carrie Schmelkin