In a competitive move against hosted conferencing services, ShoreTel Inc. announced at VoiceCon San Francisco that it is integrating collaboration capabilities into ShoreTel 8.1 Call Manager IP PBX, enabling users to quickly host meet-me audio and Web conferences, chat securely via IM and instantly share documents using the same interface they use for voice communications.
By integrating the ShoreTel Converged Conferencing 7.1 into its unified communications solution, ShoreTel enables users to access collaboration applications, such as audio conferencing, desktop/application sharing, instant messaging, virtual meeting rooms, online presentations, and multimedia recording without recurring service costs.
"In this challenging economic environment, companies are looking for communications solutions that can help them reduce costs while delivering enterprise-grade security and reliability. Today, our customers can affordably extend the tools they use for voice calls to conferencing and collaboration - simplifying their communications, increasing productivity, and significantly driving down costs by eliminating the expense of a hosted service," said Kevin Gavin, vice president of marketing, ShoreTel.