Last month at ShoreTel’s first annual industry analyst event, I spent two days with several ShoreTel customers and partners and more than 20 industry analysts who cover the unified communications market in the U.S. and abroad. It was our chance to share the ShoreTel story with a broad set of experts and discuss areas where they think ShoreTel should focus its efforts as we continue to build our premier brand. I was very proud and honored to have so many influential people join in our discussion.

The general consensus among the group of analysts was that it’s not often customers and partners speak so highly of and with such excitement about their vendors—and even less often that they are willing to be so enthusiastic in public. For that I thank our valued customers and partners, and I believe their continued interest in ShoreTel solutions speaks volumes about the current market need for easy-to-use yet robust distributed UC offerings and ShoreTel’s unique ability to address that need.

Our customer participants included CNET Networks, mentoring organization Big Brothers Big Sisters, Ireland’s largest recruitment and HR solutions organization CPL, architect and design firm Gensler, Hitachi Consulting, the Osborne Maledon law firm, and Safeway Insurance. Our partner participants included BlackBox Networks, Packet Fusion, Premcom and Transcend. Some of our technology partners attending included DiVitas, Enterasys, LifeSize and Syntellect.

I can’t think of a better way to let you know what our customers and partners like about working with ShoreTel than to just let them tell you themselves. Click here to view a short video.

By the way, at VoiceCon Orlando 2008 we’ll be previewing some exciting enhancements to our unified communications solution, including new capabilities for facilitating mobility, fostering collaboration, managing presence, and enriching business communications through video. We’ll be in booth 817, so be sure to stop by.

John W Combs