ShoreTel Announces Majority of US Partners are Offering Cloud Services

By Michael Guta
TMCnet Contributing Writer

According to a study released by Goldman Sachs last month, projected spending on cloud computing infrastructure and platforms will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 percent from 2013 to 2018. And Cisco (News - Alert) predicts 59 percent of the total cloud workloads will be Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) by 2018. Cloud technology is increasingly making up a larger percentage of the IT solutions organizations are deploying, and industries across many different sectors are starting to offer cloud services to their clients. ShoreTel Communications, provider of phone systems and unified communications (UC) solutions, introduced its cloud partner program in January 2014, and one year later it has announced more than half of its U.S. partners are now offering cloud services.

The Champion Partner Program was established to give its partners access to the latest communications technology being adopted by businesses. The ShoreTel (News - Alert) cloud platform is designed for easy implementation with the flexibility to scale and deliver multiple options for the end-user.

As more organizations migrate to the cloud after operating on-premises for many years, the transition has to be seamless to ensure business continuity without any conflict. The ability to deliver on this point allows partners to offer the solution to organizations big and small by addressing all of their UC needs.

The partnership program has a compensation structure in proportion to their performance and level of engagement. By selecting their tier and compensation plan that best supports their business model, they can dictate how they grow.

According to the company, the different tiers offer the following:

Partners in the Enabled tier (including Matrix Networks) enjoy the highest commissions and earn these high commissions annually for the life of the customer. These partners dedicate a ShoreTel cloud sales resource and manage the sales process from prospect to close.

Partners in the Approved tier, who identify and qualify a prospect and then hand them off to ShoreTel, can earn commissions annually for the life of the customer.

Partners in the Referral tier, who simply provide prospects to ShoreTel, receive a one-time commission payment.

"More than 40 percent of our U.S. partners carrying our on-premises solutions have added ShoreTel Sky to their business, and many more are joining every day,” said David Petts, senior vice president of worldwide sales at ShoreTel.

The growth taking place in cloud is also affecting communications as more organizations adopt the technology. In a forecast by IDC (News - Alert) released in August 2014, it predicted the cloud communications market will grow to a CAGR or 127.5 percent from global revenue of $123.4 million in 2013 to $7.5 billion in 2018.