A Great Leap Forward

 

Collaboration. It's never been more critical for enterprise success. The new economic landscape rewards companies that can respond to market events with swiftness and intelligence.

 

With Converged Conferencing, ShoreTel delivers a next-generation conferencing platform – an evolutionary leap made possible by the convergence of voice and data into a single, unified medium. Take control with your own in-house conferencing solution – ShoreTel Converged Conferencing delivers "anytime" access to up to 96 ports for audio conferencing, and empowers your workforce with an effortless means of sharing information.

 

And because ShoreTel Converged Conferencing is fully integrated with your phone system, it removes the cost barriers associated with traditional in-house collaboration solutions – and ends dependency on high-cost, hosted web services for ad-hoc audio/web conferences.

 

Topology of ShoreTel Voice Network in multi-site enterprise with Conference Bridge and web-based collaborative groups.

                             

With ShoreTel Converged Conferencing, your enterprise can maximize its use of knowledge resources, make better-informed decisions, and respond more swiftly to customer needs and changing market conditions.

Key Benefits:

• Enhanced Communications
Communication is accelerated and enhanced within (and between) knowledge worker communities – improving the overall information "metabolism" of your enterprise.

• More Productive Information Exchange
Information exchanges are more productive leveraging the integrated data sharing capabilities of Call Manager. Collaborators can quickly and easily share documents, charts, spreadsheets, presentations and even video clips that deliver higher-value information. Multi-media document sharing is available as a base feature, not an expensive upgrade option.

• Eliminate Costs for Collaboration Services
The migration of voice and data conferencing solutions in-house eliminates the high cost associated with external services providing conference calls and/or document sharing.

• Turbocharged productivity
Knowledge workers spend less time setting up and managing collaborations and more time working on business results.

• Higher-impact communications
Users can communicate with greater numbers of coworkers via features such as group call distribution. Leveraging this capability, workers can record a message, and then distribute it to specified groups of users.

Key Features:

• Document Sharing
Intuitive, simplified document sharing is seamlessly integrated into Converged Conferencing. Click on any document to instantly share it with others.

• Integration with Microsoft Outlook
Seamless integration with Outlook simplifies the set up of conference calls. Users can initiate a conference call "on-the-fly," by simply clicking names in their Outlook Address Books.

• Ad Hoc Conferencing
Full support is provided for both scheduled and instant "ad hoc" conferencing.

• No-Barrier Participation
Conference attendees can join discussions and share data without requiring special client software on their PCs.

• Multimedia Recording Capabilities
ShoreTel Converged Conferencing maintains a history of all your collaborations. These archives also provide a vehicle for transferring valuable information to a wider audience and "replaying" valuable collaborations – increasing the return on your investment in recording sessions.

• Dial-out Capability
Eliminate "dead" time waiting for group members to join the conference. Start at the appointed time and "click to add" latecomers as they arrive. Or include "spur-of-the-moment" invitees as they are needed.

• Audio Controls
You can leverage audio controls to "tweak" the collaborative environment for maximum effect. Mute those noisy cell phones, or turn up the sound on more "soft-spoken" types.

Solution Components:

The shoretel Converged Conference solution includes:

• ShoreWare Conference Manager. An intuitive desktop application for managing conferences.

• ShoreGear Conference Bridge. A plug-and-play network appliance that provides the foundation of your conferencing infrastructure.

• ShoreWare Conference Director. An easy-to-use, web-based management tool for setting up and administering conferences.

The ShoreWare Conference Manager application places conference control directly in the hands of users. The web-based Conference Manager gives users instant access to conferencing services – there's no software to install or plug-ins to download. With Conference Manager, workers can set up conference calls and monitor participants. Users can also share documents with others and view their own usage history.

The ShoreGear Conference Bridge is the foundation of a converged conferencing solution. An embedded IP appliance, the Conference Bridge delivers ultra-high reliability. It integrates smoothly with your ShoreTel system through your IP network or digital trunks.

The bridge supports any number of conferences with varying numbers of users. The ShoreGear Conference Bridge is available for voice-only or voice-and-data conferences, each supporting 12 to 96 simultaneous participants.

ShoreWare Conference Director gives administrators the tools they need to manage conferencing services. The highly secure, web-based application enables administrators to quickly view the system configuration, manage users and deploy its advanced reporting features.

Managing ShoreTel's Converged Conferencing solution:

ShoreTel Converged Conferencing fits smoothly into your existing IT infrastructure, extending the advantage of collaborative tools to your workforce – without additional server adoption or administrative penalties.

With ShoreTel Converged Conference, you get:

Ease-of-management: Administrators and other users are provided with an intuitive, easy-to-use management interface through ShoreWare Conference Director.

Simplified provisioning: Users can be simply provisioned through support of batch input and LDAP integration.

Full IP integration: Full IP integration eliminates the need for complex connections or expensive interface requirements.

Zero resource impact or installation hassle: No resource-draining downloads or installations are required for users to manage their conferences or show/view shared documents.

"Plug-and-go" conferencing: Built on a Linux-based bridge appliance and supported by web-based applications, the solution delivers "plug-and-go" conferencing capability.

Automatic port configuration: Upon startup, the bridge automatically discovers and adds new ports. Manual port configuration is not necessary.

Enterprise-class security: Since ShoreTel Converged Conferencing is an appliance-based solution, it provides the very highest level of security and reliability.

 

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