Increased Travel Costs Driving Demand for Video Conferencing

It's no shocker that higher oil and energy prices are putting pressure on business travel. CNBC.com is reporting that these increased travel costs are beginning to reflect on the bottom line of technology companies that can provide video conferencing and collaboration products.

The article reports that "Manpower has ramped up use of its video conference equipment in the last couple of months" and "office furniture maker Herman Miller has encouraged employees to use video conferencing in addition to conference calls and car-pooling to cut operating costs".

Manufacturers that focus on unified communication, video conferencing and teleworking can offer businesses enhanced cost savings and increase ROI in these difficult times. However, until the recent spike in energy pricing, demand for these applications was lukewarm at best. Many IT managers looked at these features as a burden on the network and as a low priority item due to cost and difficulty to deploy.

Amazingly enough, these ROI driving features are not a terrible burden on the network, overly expensive or difficult to deploy, depending on the product of course. VoIP communication developer ShoreTel's latest software release, ShoreTel 8, provides video conferencing and teleworking functionality right out of the box. ShoreTel 8 also supports integration with Microsoft OCS to provide presence and chat functionality integrated with PBX features.

Economic predictions do not foresee travel and energy costs going down anytime soon. IT directors get ready, the CEO might be knocking on your door and asking about video conferencing sooner than you think.

ShoreTel upgrades its call manager and adds new voice switches

Network World has posted an article about the ShoreTel 8 release that was reported here back in April. The article gives an overview of the new ShoreGear switches and Personal Call Manager software. You can find some of it below and the remainder here.

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

ShoreTel earlier this week announced several software and hardware upgrades and two new voice switches. Included in the announcement are enhancements to the ShoreWare Call Manager product line, more open interfaces for integration, and adds two new voice switches: the ShoreGear 24A and the ShoreGear 30.

The ShoreWare Personal Call Manager has been upgraded to provide more intuitive interfaces. Added features include an integrated client user interface with a main display for calling features and tabs for messages and history; simplified access to features designed to be easier to use and find; quick and easy dialing with exchange and phone directory along with just in time telephony presence; and a simplified, single-level user interface with personal and advanced merged options.

The ShoreWare Professional Call Manager has added improvements to its basic voice communications and it now provides automatic and on-demand video communications. The Instant Messaging interface upgrades include easy sidebar conversations; on the phone communications; and interfaces for a third party presence server. The unified communications suite has added improved call control, video calling and IM access and a rich presence integration; the suite now also supports a softphone.

ShoreTel partner brings HD videoconferencing for less to marketplace

This is an article from Networkworld.com regarding LifeSize Communications. LifeSize is a ShoreTel development partner that recently developed ShoreTel's IP8000 conference phone. LifeSize's recent development of HD video conferencing should blend well with ShoreTel's enhancements in their platform regarding video conferencing.

ShoreTel's latest software release, 8.0, already supports embedded video conferencing through the Personal Call Manager application. This feature allows users to simply click a button and create an ad-hoc video call at the desktop. With a strong partnership between LifeSize and ShoreTel already in existence, it seems logical to conclude that we may see HD video conferencing supported by the ShoreTel system in the near future.

Credit: Networkworld.com

LifeSize Communications has a new high-definition IP audio/video package that drops the previous lowest price of its gear for one site by $1,000.

Called LifeSize Focus, the bundle consists of an HD fixed-focus camera and dual omni-directional microphone integrated in a single device as well as a video coder-decoder.

The $5,000 price tag knocks $1,000 off the previous low-end LifeSize offering, LifeSize Express, whose camera and microphone come separately.

The company says the less-expensive gear is an alternative to full telepresence systems that include multiple cameras, screens, microphones, custom designed rooms and matching furniture that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per site.

While the LifeSize packages don't provide the same telepresence atmosphere, they do produce high quality audio and video that can be deployed at small sites or even home offices where the cost of a full telepresence system would be prohibitive.

Conferencing consultants say an approximation of telepresence without building dedicated rooms to house the equipment can deliver 80% of the effect of a full system. Businesses are adopting telepresence as a way to cut travel budgets and reduce their contributions to greenhouse gasses by flying fewer employees around the globe.

The camera supports 1280 x 720 video images at 30 frames per second, and can focus from 8 inches to infinity in a range of lighting conditions.

Unified communications: Is your network ready?

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

By David Newman, Network World Lab Alliance , Network World , 04/28/2008

Here are five questions for enterprise network managers to bear in mind when considering UC deployment:

1. What applications need to be unified communications-enabled?

Many enterprise IT organizations divide responsibility for networking and applications into two groups. Unified communications requires both application and network infrastructure support, so that means getting both groups on board before deployment. Enabling unified communications support may involve a little or a lot of work, depending on the application. For some messaging and VoIP applications, presence support may already be built-in.

Other applications – such as databases, CRM packages and especially custom-developed transaction-processing programs – may lack presence support altogether. Identifying which applications will need unified communications support, and getting the appropriate development help if needed, is a necessary first step.

2. What existing network infrastructure supports unified communications?

Passing along presence information in a unified communications-enabled network usually means supporting new protocols and/or adding infrastructure services. With location-based unified communications services, for example, DNS servers may need to be updated with SRV (service type) and LOC (location) records. Other infrastructure services, such as those for e-mail and instant messaging, may need to be extended. Presence information (for example, to move availability status between voice and instant-messaging systems) can be added via SIMPLE or XMPP.

Security is always a concern whenever adding new pathways through the network. Most unified communications systems can use centralized directory servers such as those based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol or Microsoft Active Directory to authenticate users or processes seeking to communicate. And firewalls and other security devices will need to be reconfigured to support new messaging protocols – not just SIMPLE and XMPP but also any proprietary messaging protocols such as those used by AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and the like.

3. What about presence for existing PBXs?

Telephony systems have supported presence services for decades (think do-not-disturb and call-forwarding features), but that doesn't necessarily translate into unified communications support for messaging, video and other data types. It's relatively easy to add presence support to open-source platforms such as Asterisk or OpenSER. For proprietary PBXs (even those based on derivatives of the ITU's H.323 specs), more work may be needed. Check with your PBX vendor about adding support for presence protocols such as SIMPLE and/or XMPP.

4. How will you manage unified communications?

Given the huge interest in collapsing services into centralized data centers, it may make sense to add and manage unified communications from a central location as well. During trials, for example, it's far easier to locate a single Jabber server at a central data center rather than to distribute servers throughout the enterprise and then try to keep them all in sync. Centralized management also can simplify change management. Alternatively, unified communications can be totally outsourced as well; professional services groups at major PBX vendors such as Avaya and Siemens offer unified communications as a service.

5. What about unified communications support for future applications?

Because the concept of unified communications is so broad, it's quite likely additional applications and network services will eventually be needed, well after initial deployment. Experience during initial trials may be instructive: If it's difficult to integrate, say, LDAP support into one application, then adding it to 10 applications could prove far more challenging. A post-mortem after initial deployment will help you understand which of unified communications' many parts do and don't work in your organization.

ShoreTel Ranked Among Silicon Valley's Top 150 Public Companies

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ShoreTel(R), Inc.
(Nasdaq: SHOR), a leading provider of Pure IP Unified Communications
solutions, announced today that the San Jose Mercury News has included
ShoreTel in the 2007 Silicon Valley 150, ranking the company number 148
with $117.5 million in reported revenue for CY 2007. ShoreTel earned even
higher marks for other report metrics, including 126th in market
capitalization at $219.8 million, 95th in profit at $8.3 million and 70th
in profit margin at 7 percent.

The San Jose Mercury News, recognized as the newspaper of record for
the Northern California technology business region, conducts the annual
Silicon Valley 150, ranking public companies headquartered in Santa Clara,
Santa Cruz, southern San Mateo and southern Alameda Counties. Companies are
evaluated on the basis of worldwide revenues for the most recent available
four quarters. Market capitalization -- the number of shares outstanding
multiplied by the price of a single share -- is as of March 31, the last
trading day of the first quarter of 2008.

Throughout 2007, ShoreTel maintained a steady stream of partner,
product and customer announcements.

The company celebrated winning numerous prestigious awards, including
Inc. magazine 5000 award, Deloitte Technology Fast 500 in North America and
Fast 50 in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Silicon Valley/San Jose Business
Journal Fast 50.

The Silicon Valley 150 was published in the April 13, 2008 edition of
the San Jose Mercury News.

ShoreTel VP discusses unified communications

Credit: NoJitter Podcast

Steve Timmerman, Vice President of Marketing, ShoreTel, discusses the growing role for desktop video in enterprise communications, mobility, and the relative importance of hardware and software in enterprise communications networking, with NoJitter Editor and Lead Blogger Eric Krapf.

Unified Communications the Next Step for VoIP

Human latency, it's an elaborate term for something that we each experience regularly, the time it takes for someone to return a communication. Whether that communication is via phone, e-mail, text or any other method, human latency costs corporations millions each year.

The latest wave in communications is designed around eliminating human latency by providing a variety of features centered around presence information and mobility features in the workplace. Leveraging existing VoIP networks, communication systems are now providing presence information, real-time chat, on-demand video communication, mobility, and document collaboration to users. These features are referred to as unified communications, every avenue to communicate with someone available at the user's fingertips.

Users can now see the corporate contacts available to speak, chat, collaborate on a project, and video conference all in one interface. Corporate connectivity can even be extended to the mobile device to provide the same information seen at the desktop. These enhancements are allowing people to communicate faster and more efficiently, eliminating the issue of human latency. Some people may look at unified communications as overdoing it, but connecting with the right person at the right time is critical to getting the job done efficiently and ensuring the bottom line.

ShoreTel 8 Update!

ShoreTel 8 was released under "controlled release" terms on March 31. The newest version of ShoreTel's software features an overhaul for the Personal Call Manager software as well as built in video capabilities, internal chat, and presence server integration. ShoreTel continues to raise the bar on functionality and user experience and ShoreTel 8 will no doubt be a big success with all customers new and existing.

Check back later as more information is released regarding ShoreTel's newest enhancement.