“The UK voice market is changing rapidly and it is difficult for vendors to differentiate their technology.” Commented Simon Welch, Marketing Director Horizon. “ShoreTel are a pure play IP vendor whose technology is differentiated by its unique distributed software architecture and switched-based hardware platform. They are also a company committed to Unified Communications (UC) which is probably the greatest opportunity for the channel in the next few years.” He continued.
“We are rapidly moving out of the 'slide-ware phase' and into the 'adoption phase' as UC becomes a deliverable reality. Horizon is very excited about this opportunity and we are looking for partners who are serious about taking a Unified Comms strategy to market.
The showcase events, which will commence in early September, will be held in Basingstoke, Warrington, London and Dublin and resellers will not only be able to see how to develop a successful ShoreTel VoIP revenue stream, but also how ShoreTel technology is being integrated with other IP based communications technologies from Tandberg (video) and Microsoft into a Unified Comms solution.”
“UC is a very complex beast and currently nobody is capable of delivering a solution which truly fulfils Gartners definition of what UC actually is, e.g.: telephony, unified messaging, desktop client, e-mail, instant messaging, audio conferencing, video conferencing, web conferencing, converged conferencing, notification service, personal assistant, rich presence service, communications-enabled business processes, contact centre, mobile solutions, and collaboration.
“Resellers need to start somewhere and we feel they need a distribution partner who they can work with who can help them to integrate the various and diverse strands of IP communications technology into a deliverable reality. As we develop our UC solution set we need to find resellers who will bring their existing skills in voice, video or data and partner with us to develop a new route to market to exploit the opportunity ahead.”