VoiceCon: IBM and ShoreTel team on Lotus Foundations collaboration

On Wednesday, IBM showed off their Lotus Foundations with ShoreTel offering--billing it as an affordable unified communications and collaborations (UCC) offering 'in-a-box.' Designed for the SMB budget, it combines enterprise-class UCC features, including mobility, security, email, presence, instant messaging and advanced IP telephony, in an appliance-based solution.

I spoke with Alistair Rennie, General Manager of IBM Lotus Software, and he explained that "it's less about the pure technology and more about the deployment." How easy can we get something deployed? According to the company, in just a few clicks and no on-site expertise the solution can be deployed. The device phones home for upgrades and lets business worry about something other than IT.

ShoreTel for IBM Lotus Foundations combines ShorTel's offerings with IBM's systems. "We take the Lotus Foundations appliance that provides mail, print file, antivirus, anti-spam, core collaboration tools as well as user administration and we plug in an accessory pack which is the ShorTel PBX capability and then almost magically all the user admin populates itself with communications options, you provision phone, voice mail, and the foundation management system looks after core collaboration and becomes the foundation to look after the commucation infrastructure based on the ShoreTel PBX."

For more:
- read the release

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