ShoreTel Delivers Benefits of Customisable Virtualisation Without the Complexity for All Sized Businesses

Customers can mix and match hardware-based and virtual appliances for highest reliability and scalability at the lowest cost. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) February 04, 2014 - ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple phone systems and unified communications (UC) solutions for the cloud and premises, today launched ShoreTel 14.2 which allows companies of all sizes to deploy a ShoreTel communications system in a virtual environment. ShoreTel 14.2 delivers greater flexibility for customers, with the ability to mix and match hardware-based and virtual appliances in a single network, all managed using a single web-based management interface. With ShoreTel 14.2, customers may now select the UC-deployment model that best suits their business and infrastructure needs - virtual, physical or any combination of both. The benefits are immediate - reduced hardware and operational complexity, higher application availability, increased scalability and reliability.

Communication systems requirements vary widely from company to company, and the availability of virtualisation technology is changing how UC is deployed in small- and medium-sized companies, as well as large enterprises. Virtualisation technology can deliver a number of benefits to customers, depending on customer uses and needs. According to VMware, most physical servers operate at less than 15 per cent of capacity - not only is this highly inefficient, it also introduces server sprawl and complexity. VMware also reports that server virtualisation delivers 80 per cent greater utilisation of server resources, up to 50 per cent savings in capital and operating costs, and a 10:1 or better server-consolidation ratio.

"The time is now to take advantage of virtualisation for UC - the infrastructure is in place, the market is ready, the channel is knowledgeable, and customers are clamouring to virtualise their PBX and entire communications platform," said Pej Roshan, Vice President of Product Management at ShoreTel. "Virtualisation complements our distributed architecture and allows customers to benefit from virtualisation features and ShoreTel's inherent N+1 redundancy to deliver high availability at the lowest cost. In addition, virtualisation sets the foundation for customers to consume VoIP services via on-premises, hybrid, and cloud-deployment models."

ShoreTel enables customers to choose the unique deployment model that best suits their needs. This allows customers to leverage virtual servers they already own and operate.

"My customers are ready to deploy virtualisation technologies, and with ShoreTel 14.2, they have the ability to mix and match hardware-based and virtual appliances on a single network," said Jeremy Vignaux, Vice President of Technology at Harbor Networks, a leading US-based ShoreTel reseller. "This brings greater flexibility, along with reduced hardware and operational costs, because virtual appliances support higher phone and SIP trunk capacities. And terminating SIP trunks on virtual appliances is a lot simpler, whilst also increasing the capacity of the virtual machines."

ShoreTel 14.2 enables all ShoreTel UC components, including call control, SIP trunks, and collaboration applications, to be virtualised and implemented on industry-standard servers.

In addition, virtualisation allows customers to take advantage of features for higher availability, such as VMware vSphere High Availability, and zero-downtime live migration of running virtual machines with VMware vSphere vMotion, to improve applications availability and enable disaster-recovery practices companies already have in place.

The ShoreTel UC Virtualisation Advantage

The new ShoreTel software also allows easy scalability for enterprise-grade customers by quadrupling the port capacity per appliance. ShoreTel virtual switches support up to 1,000 phones and 500 SIP trunks. This increased capacity simplifies deployment and eliminates the need to manage multiple appliances, especially for customers that choose a centralised UC deployment.

The ShoreTel solution can be implemented on industry-standard virtualised servers; thus, consolidating the server hardware across multiple applications, reducing energy requirements and minimising hardware footprint.

ShoreTel 14.2 is available now from qualified ShoreTel reseller partners.

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About ShoreTel, Inc.
ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHOR) is a leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems and unified communications solutions. Its award-winning on-premises IP-PBX solution and cloud-based hosted phone system eliminate complexity and improve productivity. Recognized for its industry-leading customer experience and support, ShoreTel's innovative business phones, application integration, collaboration tools, mobility, and contact center applications enable users to communicate and collaborate no matter the time, place or device, with minimal demand on IT resources. ShoreTel is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has regional offices and partners worldwide. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com.

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

ShoreTel assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements included in this release. This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the federal securities laws including, without limitation, statements regarding the benefits and capabilities of ShoreTel 14.2 and virtualization in general and their adoption by customers. The forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.

The risks and uncertainties include the intense competition in our industry, our reliance on third parties to sell and support our products, our ability to continue to grow our ShoreTel Sky business, market acceptance of cloud-based products, our ability to maintain our premise business in a profitable manner, supply and manufacturing risks, our ability to control costs as we expand our business, our ability to attract, retain and ramp new sales personnel, potentially longer sales cycles, uncertainties inherent in the product development cycle, uncertainty as to market acceptance of new products and services, the potential for litigation in our industry, the uncertain impact of global economic conditions, including impact on customers' purchasing decisions, and other risk factors set forth in ShoreTel's Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2013, and in its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2013.

ShoreTel and the ShoreTel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of ShoreTel, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions.

Media contact:

Joy Francisco
Asia-Pacific Connections for ShoreTel
joy ( @ ) apconnections dot com
+65 6334 9045

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