ShoreTel 14.2 Provides Customizable Virtualization

Some businesses require more than a "one size fits all" solution, or need a specific variety of appliances, both virtual and hardware-based, to do the work they need. As such, ShoreTel has launched ShoreTel 14.2, enabling companies to deploy a ShoreTel communications system in a virtual environment, and customize it according to their needs in a single network with a web-based management interface.

ShoreTel 14.2 leverages the customers' existing infrastructure, and allows users to mix and match deployment options, whether physical, virtual, or a combination of both.

With ShoreTel 14.2, customers can pick their own combination of virtual and physical UC deployment models, gaining scalability, reliability, and higher application availability with reduced complexity. Because of its mix-and-match design, ShoreTel notes that customers can find a model that meets their needs and price point as closely as possible.

Through ShoreTel 14.2, customers can virtualize and implement all ShoreTel UC components, such as SIP trunks, collaboration applications, and call control. It also provides higher availability, while still increasing capacity and productivity.

Virtualized servers provide a significantly higher utilization of capacity than physical servers, and virtualization allows companies of all sizes to deploy unified communications solutions that scale to their price and performance needs. When customers have physical or virtual servers in place that they want to use, it's important that they can leverage these servers while adding more functionality.

According to Blair Pleasant, co-founder of UCStrategies, "ShoreTel is working hard to maintain its 'Brilliantly Simple' philosophy, even in a virtualized deployment, by offering simple licensing, ease of deployment, and simple administration." She added, "While ShoreTel was a bit late to the game in terms of virtualizing its entire solution, it's done a good job of providing options for its customers, whether it's leveraging their existing VMware environment, using the ShoreTel appliance model, or a combination of both. The virtualized deployment provides increased capacity for calls, conferences, and SIP trunks, which will be appealing to larger customers."

"The time is now to take advantage of virtualization for unified communications - the infrastructure is in place, the market is ready, the channel is knowledgeable, and customers are clamoring to virtualize their PBX and entire communications platform," says Pej Roshan, VP of Product Management at ShoreTel. "Virtualization complements our distributed architecture and allows customers to benefit from virtualization features and ShoreTel's inherent N+1 redundancy to deliver high availability at the lowest cost. In addition,virtualization sets the foundation for customers to consume VoIP services via on-premises, hybrid, and cloud deployment models."

As virtualization grows easier and more effective, physical servers may eventually begin to phase out of use, but it's up to individual companies to determine when they make the switch and to what degree. The customizability that ShoreTel 14.2 provides will allow ShoreTel customers to determine how much they virtualize, so they can work according to their needs and means.