ShoreTel's New Virtual PBX Entry Goes Live

The old saw popularized by the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” continues to deliver worthwhile insight to this day: get busy living, or get busy dying. That's a phrase that's paying off for businesses as well, and recently, virtual private branch exchange (PBX) firm ShoreTel  introduced its ShoreTel Connect CLOUD system and ShoreTel Connect Contact Center for CLOUD system to the United Kingdom.

With the introduction of these new systems, the virtual PBX firm can bring a variety of unified communications (UC) services into play, with easy-to-understand customer pricing structures as well as the benefits inherent in such systems. UK firms can now enjoy the full slate of options—from voice and videos systems to conferencing, messaging, and even a slate of mobile options, even contact center options, all under the same product umbrella.

Better yet, these systems are now being offered through the complete lineup of ShoreTel cloud partners, which means that the systems will likely be put into place much more rapidly than without. The infrastructure, essentially, is already in place, making such dissemination a lot easier to carry out. Given that cloud-based solutions offered on a partner-managed basis were available in the UK back in 2015, this move is widely  seen as just building on previous efforts.

Better yet, there's already a wide body of customers satisfied with the virtual PBX firm's efforts to bring more communications capability to current operations. Peter Colby Commercials' Jerry Belicki noted that ShoreTel Connect CLOUD was “simple to use and administer,” and proved sufficiently valuable that the company had been using it for the preceding 12 months. A solution that lasts a year in a business setting must be working out well, because otherwise, it likely would have been replaced before that point.

Having the right tools to keep communications moving strongly is vital for any business operation, and ShoreTel's line of tools looks to provide those communications on several levels. Not only is there a clear slate of tools geared toward internal communication and external communication with vendors and colleagues, there's even a customer-facing element in the contact center tools. Having all these systems from one vendor in one place can be a winning strategy, especially if this vendor is particularly useful in terms of delivering value. So far, all we know about ShoreTel suggests that this value is indeed on hand, and that's good news for the user base.

ShoreTel's own British invasion will likely be well-received, and plenty of firms in the UK should be ready to bring ShoreTel's communications tools into wide use. There's too much at stake not to have at least some interest here, and while there will be plenty of competitors, ShoreTel should be ready to take them on.

Edited by Maurice Nagle