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May 16, 2013

CEO of ShoreTel, Peter Blackmore, Announces Retirement

By Nicole Spector, Contributing Writer

ShoreTel (News - Alert), a provider of unified business communications solutions, has announced that its chief executive officer, Peter Blackmore, will be leaving the company, Unified Communications (News - Alert) Strategies reports.



Blackmore, who intends to retire, was hired as the CEO of ShoreTel in December 2010. When exactly he will leave is unknown as a replacement must be found first – no candidates have been announced. Before he was hired, it apparently took the company five months to find a successor. Blackmore probably hasn't been able to plan any retirement summer vacations just yet. 

Blackmore is credited as a mastermind behind the firm's acquisition of M5. A fan of the cloud, Blackmore has spoken of its importance and decided that it made more sense strategically to buy a cloud than build one.

M5 owned and developed its own technology, which caught the attention of Blackmore. The firm held a high ARPU, and was recognized as a leader in Gartner’s (News - Alert) Magic Quadrant for UCaaS.

When it transitioned its appliance SMB voice solution into an enterprise-ready UC solution, ShoreTel already had a determined R&D roadmap. The company was in the midst of integrating its Agito acquisition from 2010. M5, too, was a growing business. The latter needed the cash for investment purposes.

Before coming aboard ShoreTel, Blackmore had held the title of CEO at UTStarcom. Before that, he held leadership positions at Unisys (News - Alert) and HP's Customer Solutions and Enterprise Systems groups.

In November 2012, Blackmore was named one of CRN’s Top 100 Executives in the IT Channel for 2012 in the Innovators category.

ShoreTel has had to say goodbye to several of its executives including Joe Vitalone, Jeff Valentine, Don Girskis, and Tim Gaines.

Chuck Kissner (News - Alert), a ShoreTel board member was made board chairman had only kind things to say about Blackmore and was optimistic about the company's future.

“We are grateful that Peter will continue in his role during this transition period,” Kissner said. “We intend to keep moving full speed ahead with our near-term plans to launch new innovative products and services and to continue to execute on our combined premise and cloud strategy.”




Edited by Rich Steeves
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