The best VoIP solution is ...
By James Bannan, ZDNet.com.au
15 September 2009 10:01 AM
Based out of the US, ShoreTel is a particularly interesting player in the pure VoIP market with a pitch that says: "the best product, not the best marketing". Unlike the vast majority of IP telephony vendors, the functionality of ShoreTel's products is centred around its software applications rather than the feature sets of their hardware. This means that a ShoreTel VoIP implementation uses a distributed architecture model which has some extremely beneficial flow-ons.
The physical infrastructure of a ShoreTel system revolves around the ShoreGear range of voice switches. Depending on the business, the number of physical handsets that need to be supported, and other considerations like support for analog trunking, there is quite a variety of voice switches available. Ranging from the half rack-width ShoreGear-30 (approx US$1300) which supports up to 30 IP phones and four analog ports, to the ShoreGear-220T1A (approx US$5500) which supports 220 IP phones or 70 phones and a T1 connection, ShoreTel supplies a wide variety of systems to meet the specific physical requirements of a business site. Each switch communicates via the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) with all other switches, IP phones and softphones, and will integrate with both legacy and current-generation PBX systems.
Although the core functionality is contained within the switches, all control and management is centralised using ShoreWare Director. This is a web interface that handles management for all voice applications, regardless of the number or layout of the ShoreGear infrastructure. Rather than having to individually manage each device on the system, the Director interface presents a unified view of the overall system resources, despite their physical location (including cross-site). Because core functionality is unified across all ShoreGear devices, each switch can pick up and balance the load (depending on capacity) in the event of device failure. Using this methodology ShoreTel is able to avoid single points of failure and provide N+1 redundancy, compared with all other IP telephony vendors that are effectively locked into a 1+1 redundancy model, where available.
The user end is supported by a range of ShorePhone IP handsets which come in a variety of shapes, sizes and feature sets, including 24-line expansion boxes, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth headset compatibility and an integrated VPN client. Prices range from approximately US$130 to US$500. Users also have access to softphone technology via the ShoreWare Call Manager application.
Unified communications capabilities are built into the system rather than as an optional add-in. The ShoreWare range of messaging products provide native access to voicemail, messaging, desktop video and user presence. The system will also integrate with third-party PBX voicemail and UC systems like Microsoft OCS or IBM Lotus Sametime. There are also optional add-on applications to support integration with systems like Microsoft CRM and Salesforce.com.
This approach offers some rather intriguing benefits by effectively abstracting the software component from the hardware, allowing businesses to treat and manage the two as separate entities. Due to software upgrades not being dependent upon hardware capabilities, hardware changes are dynamically reflected in the software and with licensing handled on a per-user basis, which according to ShoreTel, serves to drive down the TCO of its VoIP range. This, combined with its claim that switches consume around 60 per cent less power than the equivalent Cisco systems, means that customers are going to ShoreTel to benefit from reduced TCO. It also means that ShoreTel does not need to create expensive migration and roll-over roadmaps for its customers — the system simply expands to meet growing demand.
Because of the scalable nature of its products, ShoreTel doesn't really have to differentiate between small, medium and large customers. Having said that, it does have an upper support limit of 10,000 users and admits that the "sweet spot" of its customer base is in the 50 to 6000 user range. ShoreTel also produces and markets a Small Business Edition product, which is a switch, UC and user licence bundle designed as an affordable single site implementation. Again, because it's based on the standard range of ShoreTel products, expansion beyond the limits imposed by the SBE model is achieved via a software upgrade rather than a hardware changeover.
ShoreTel's distributed approach to pure IP telephony is quite innovative and well worth considering. It does not have a large presence in Australia at present, but is expanding rapidly.
