IP telephony giant ShoreTel launches beachhead in Ireland

2 Nov 2010

A US technology company declared the fastest growing IP telephony vendor in the world is establishing a new Irish office to deliver the latest integrated voice, video, data and mobile communications into the hands of Irish enterprises.

California-based ShoreTel developed integrated unified communications systems that enable any business with a local or wide area network to set up anything between three and 3,000 connections.

The company has appointed Barry Dillon, former country manager at Nortel, as its new country manager in Ireland. Dillon will work with local resellers such as Data Solutions to deploy ShorTel’s technology with Irish enterprises.

The managing director of ShoreTel EMEA John Howard told Siliconrepublic that the company’s appliance-based architecture is focused on reducing complexity and driving down the cost of ownership.

Different technology

“While we target the same marketplace as companies like Cisco and Avaya, the technology is different because it is developed purely for a world of IP (intellectual protocol) communications.”

Analyst Synergy recently reported that ShoreTel is the fastest-growing IP telephony vendor worldwide based on revenue. In terms of desktop unified communications (UC) deployments the company is the number one in terms of smalls and midsize businesses and in the US is in the top three IP telephony suppliers based on revenue.

Howard explained that whether you are an SME or a large corporate every deployment is based on the exact same product. “For most competitors their box is spinning media while ours solid state media and we use 50 watts of energy – the same as a light bulb.”

He said that more and more businesses are seeking to put unified communications on workers’ smartphones and the company has developed apps for the iPhone, BlackBerry, HTC and Nokia devices.

“Using our technology, there is no such thing as a missed call. That call gets managed so it is either diverted to a PA, a colleague or voice mail. You can also be GPS-enabled so that if you are in your office your mobile calls divert to your office number.”

Howard said that 70pc of ShoreTel’s installed base have under 500 seats typically. “We see our technology as vital to reducing costs and boosting productivity.”

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com