Sinclair Community College is the largest regional provider of online education, with more than 180 different online courses and a mission that focuses on providing accessible, high quality, affordable learning opportunities. As a commuter college that depends on the telephone to ensure smooth communication with students, Sinclair College needed to replace a legacy phone system from a manufacturer that had dropped out of the picture. ShoreTel was Sinclair’s choice for the future.

Sinclair Community College encompasses five remote campuses covering a forty-mile radius from its Dayton Oh campus, and servers more than 27,000 commuter students. The largest regional provider of online education, its' mission is to provide accessible, high quality, affordable learning opportunities. Of the nearly 37,000 calls it handles during peak registration periods, most concern financial aid and require the expertise of agents with very specific training. As the economy drives more people to move towards new careers and qualifications, Sinclair expects peak call rates to top 46,000 in 2010.

In 2002, Sinclair's legacy Fujitsu PBX manufacturer went out of business. Although the PBX system met current needs, college staff recognized that the system ultimately needed replacement. With a knowledgeable IT staff active in organizations such as the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education (ACUTA) which has a well established VoIP special interest group, Sinclair was well prepared to evaluate VoIP and IP-PBX solutions against the specific needs of higher education settings. After talking to Accent Information Systems, a ShoreTel partner, two IP-based communication systems made it to Sinclair's short list, Avaya and ShoreTel.

Find out more about the solution by clicking this link: http://www.shoretel.com/resource_center/success_stories/Sinclair_Community_College.html

 

Report Focuses Heavily on Customer Experience and Product Offering

ShoreTel® the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), announced it has received a "Strong Positive" rating in Gartner's April 2010 "MarketScope for Unified Communications for the SMB Market, North America." The report's weighted rating system focuses most heavily on the customer experience and the capabilities, quality, and feature set of the product.

Kevin Gavin, Vice President of Marketing, ShoreTel, said "We believe this report and our ‘Strong Positive' rating confirms our position in the market and our commitment to providing our customers with the industry's best features, reliability, and service. From small companies to large enterprises, it's clear that when customers share their experiences, ShoreTel's true leadership shines."

 

 

  Growth continues - combined resources enhance services to clients
Accent Information Systems, a regional leader in sales of business telephone technology, data and converged network solutions, announced today that it has acquired the cabling and IP telephony business, along with selected assets from Newcome Electronic Systems headquartered in Columbus Ohio. This transaction is an important part of Accent’s aggressive growth strategy to expand its service capacity throughout Ohio.

Our President, Frank Goode stated, “This partnership will allow clients of Newcome Electronic Systems to continue to enjoy the high level of service and support they’ve had over the past 30⁺ years”. Tim Newcome of Newcome Electronics said, “I wanted to find a well-established, professional company that is committed to the community and Accent’s reputation is second to none; I believe they will continue our legacy of first-class performance and leave our customers well served”.

Businesses look for a partner that can provide the structured cabling solution that works along with the data network backbone and then delivers a solution to the desktop that fulfills customer’s needs. Over the past 17 years Accent has helped many companies reach this goal.

Our two organizations have worked on some mutual accounts throughout the years and with this acquistion will be adding some notable names to the Accent client list.

Accent will support all clients that use HP ProCurve data equipment, Proxim Broadband Wireless and ShoreTel IP telephone equipment. Newcome clients will continue to use the existing Newcome phone number and website.

ShoreTel Reaches One Million Phone Milestone With Shipment to Non-Profit Community Health Center Company Ships One Millionth Phone to Clinica Romero, which works on behalf of the underserved population of Greater Los Angeles

The leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated Unified Communications (UC), is pleased to announce that is has shipped its one millionth phone to Clinica Romero in Los Angeles as part of an initial deployment that includes more than 180 phones in three locations.

"We're thrilled to be the recipient of the one millionth phone since ShoreTel is one in a million when it comes to phone systems," said Robert Desmond, CFO at Clinica Romero. "The ShoreTel solution provides a solid platform for future growth and enables us to deploy a single phone system across all of our three sites, and manage them from a single point without requiring additional IT resources. Plus, the easy to learn features create a highly efficient call center to better serve our community."

As a private, nonprofit, federally qualified community health center, Clinica Romero operates in East Los Angeles neighborhoods, serving disadvantaged patients, including the homeless, from more than 140 Southern California zip codes. ShoreTel features such as workgroups, hunt groups and office anywhere, help Clinica Romero ensure that no call goes unanswered, and that patients are routed to the most qualified staff member as quickly as possible.

Despite the economic downturn, ShoreTel has maintained a steady growth over the past few years, in part due to its management simplicity and obsessive focus on customer satisfaction. In April 2009, independent analyst firm, Synergy Research, announced that ShoreTel had achieved the No.1 market-share position worldwide in the small and midsize market for its desktop application, ShoreTel Call Manager. In November, Nemertes Research awarded ShoreTel Best Overall VoIP Provider for the sixth year in a row, based on independent surveys of IT professionals.

It has been said before that the "first million is the hardest". We are glad to have ShoreTel as a Premier partner. Let's get the 2nd million!

What’s interesting in 2010?

As the year starts we all look for ways to “start anew”. One of our partners shared with me recently “with 2020 only ten years away, the year 2010 takes on new significance”.

At Accent many of you have know us for years as a provider of solutions. The truth is we hardly come up with the solutions alone. You, our clients, tell us what works best for you and provide the direction we need for a Great Solution.

We have been running the IT Seminars downtown Columbus for nearly three years now and as we “start anew” we are looking for input regarding the topics we should highlight for the upcoming year.

You have the floor.  What is of interest to you? Seminars on general business processes, specific phone technology, Contact Centers, web based solutions  etc…? We are looking forward to some exciting seminars this year with your help. Please send your suggestions to aisoffice@accentservices.com . They will be considered for upcoming events.

Don’t forget that we will be giving away two premium seats to one of the Blue Jackets games on the 19^th. We hope to see you there.

As we begin to total up the donations for Pelotonia we are very grateful for the support you have shown us and The James Cancer Research Center.

We couldn't have been successful without you. Thank you. If you know of others that would like to joing the 1,000's that have raised millions please direct them to the website.

The ride has finished this year but the Fight against Cancer continues. Thank you!

Take a look at some of the pictures from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42074670@N06/sets

New ShoreGear Family of V Switches helps ensure access to business-critical voicemail applications in the event of WAN failure

SUNNYVALE, CA, January 22, 2009 - ShoreTel, Inc., (NASDAQ: SHOR), a leading provider of Pure IP Unified Communications (UC) solutions, has unveiled a new family of ShoreGear® Voice Switches that extends the company's unique single-image distributed architecture to voicemail and auto-attendant applications. By integrating support for these capabilities into its switches, ShoreTel expands its leadership in the UC industry by reducing the cost and complexity of deploying a highly reliable and robust voicemail and auto-attendant system across multiple locations. With the ShoreGear 50V, ShoreGear 90V and ShoreGear 90BRIV switches, organizations can ensure local access to voicemail even in the event of WAN downtime.

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

• ShoreTel continues to extend the capabilities of its distributed and robust communications platform, making UC easier, more reliable, and more cost-effective to deploy.
• More Flexibility: The ShoreGear family of V switches gives our companies greater flexibility to deploy reliable voicemail services at their branch offices by simply equipping the office with the new switch.
• Improved Reliability: The ShoreGear family of V switches stores voicemail messages on highly reliable Compact Flash Card technology, offering superior reliability over traditional disk drives.
• Small Footprint: To conserve space in the data center, the ShoreGear V switches are packaged in 1U half-width chassis and occupy no more rack space than the ShoreGear 50, 90 and 90BRI models.

FEATURES

For a detailed description and list of features for all ShoreGear switches click here.

• The ShoreGear 50V switch supports up to 50 IP telephones, two analog extensions and four loop-start trunks. It also supports 50 voicemail boxes with 22 hours of voicemail storage.
• The ShoreGear 90V switch supports up to 90 IP telephones, four analog extensions and eight loop-start trunks. It also supports 90 voicemail boxes with 56 hours of voicemail storage.
• The ShoreGear 90BRIV switch supports up to 90 IP phones, four analog extensions, and four BRI ports (eight channels). It also supports 90 voicemail boxes with 56 hours of voicemail storage.

QUOTES

"Voicemail is an essential component of business-critical communications and, as such, it is one of the key pillars of a unified communications platform. For today's workers, voicemail is a crucial business tool that must be accessible anytime, and from anywhere. By integrating voicemail into a distributed architecture through the new ShoreGear V switches, ShoreTel has made it possible for companies to cost-effectively increase the reliability and accessibility of their voicemail, leading to greater productivity and improved customer service."

- Kevin Gavin, vice president of marketing, ShoreTel

For detailed information on ShoreTel products and features, click here.

Credit: Marketwire.com

ORLANDO, FL--(Marketwire - January 19, 2009) - LOTUSPHERE -- ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), a leading
provider of Pure IP Unified Communications (UC) solutions, today announced
that it has begun field trials of the ShoreTel plug-in for IBM Lotus
Sametime.

ShoreTel announced in March 2008 it was working with IBM to integrate
technologies that allow customers to access ShoreTel's powerful IP
telephony features from within their Lotus Sametime application. Customers
interested in leveraging this integration can now apply to participate in
the field trial by sending an email to fieldtrials@shoretel.com.

The ShoreTel plug-in includes call control and management features of
ShoreTel's award-winning ShoreWare Call Manager end-user application suite.
With the plug-in for Lotus Sametime, companies can integrate voice
capabilities throughout their IBM Lotus collaboration applications,
providing new ways to increase productivity and collaboration without
requiring users to learn a new program or change their habits. The combined
solution is easy to deploy, easy to manage and easy to use, and offers
unmatched reliability. ShoreTel will preview the capabilities of the
plug-in at this year's Lotusphere 2009 conference, January 18-22 at Walt
Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort, Orlando, Fla. in the Foundation lab
and on the exhibit floor in booth #622.

"The ShoreTel plug-in for Lotus Sametime provides customers with more
options for integrating our wide range of unified communications
capabilities with their core business processes to increase employee
productivity and collaboration throughout the enterprise," said Mark Arman,
vice president of business development at ShoreTel. "Our ongoing work with
IBM reflects our deep commitment to delivering the communications
solutions enterprises need to remain competitive, while ensuring an optimal
customer experience."

The ShoreTel plug-in adds the following key capabilities for Lotus Sametime
users:

-- Telephony presence - System users can see when another person on the system is on a call.

-- Click to dial, call by name - Users can easily place a call by selecting a name in the Lotus Sametime or IBM Lotus Notes and Domino directories.

-- Telephony control at a click - Telephony features, such as hold, transfer and conference, become intuitively easy.

-- Integrated call stack - Users can manage multiple calls from within the Lotus Sametime user interface.

You can see the whole press release here.