We recently had an opportunity to work with a ShoreTel client that was exclusively using Apple Mac's throughout their enterprise. We asked how they made that decision given the clear cost advantage WinTel PC hardware had over your basic Macbook. The answer was simple and clearly economic. They had used Windows in the past, but […]
If you are paying even the slightest attention to current technology trends, you will notice that many of your desktop applications are taking on the appearance of a browser! The entire Microsoft Office suite, for example, has been optimized for the “cloud”. Free versions available for iPhone. Mobile devices in particular are depending more […]
Phone only 'call centers' have been rapidly replaced with 'contact centers' that can also handle email and chat communications. Customers want more options for interacting with companies they buy products and services from. Chat requires the customer to be at a computer and though email may be sent from a mobile phone, generally the sender […]
Phone Training is a double edged sword. Everyone wants it but nobody really wants to make the time commitment required to get comfortable with the new phone features that a system like ShoreTel brings to your business. Most folks figure it is a phone, how complex can it be? That is true, ShoreTel phone are […]
The most often asked question we hear among ShoreTel system administrators is how best to achieve "fail over", assure high availability and assure business continuity? There is no simple answer to this question nor is there any one "best practice". It is going to depend on any number of interrelated issues including budget, facilities, availability […]
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a range of storage options that make them our first choice in cloud based storage solutions and an ideal location for our ShoreTel data backup. In fact, now that ShoreTel has moved to virtualized hardware for voice gateways, we have moved our entire ShoreTel deployment into the AWS EC2 environment, […]
If you have worked with ECC custom integrations for any length of time, you have build a library of solutions to work with. Most recently you have discovered that a 32 bit application like ECC, running on a 64 bit Windows 2008 or 2012 server needs a 32 bit OBDC driver! When you click […]
"Welcome to the ShoreTel Conferencing" sounds like a commercial announcement and many system owners want it changed! After all they just paid a big whack of money to own a brand new brilliantly simple phone system! Now when they have a client conference, they sound like they transferred the call to an outside third party […]
An IPsec Virtual Private Network or VPN, is sometimes used as a backup route for a Wide Area Network failure. VPN’s are typically deployed as a “tunnel” through the Internet and as such are “point to point” solutions by definition. Unfortunately that will not get the job done for a VoIP deployment! If you have […]
If you have a device on your network that you do not have root privileges for, then your entire enterprise is at risk for a Cybercrime! Do you want to know what a Trojan horse might look like? It might very well look like a Linux appliance provided by an outside manufacturer, delivered and installed […]
Big Brother is Watching! The thought of people being concerned that NSA is listing and monitoring their activities is a hysterically funny concept to me. Whatever you think of Edward Snowden, know that he is a day late and a dollar short. Most of these very same people that worry about the NSA, have a […]
If you have ever considered adding a Wallboard to your CISCO UCCX based Contact Center deployment, you know that the selections are slim. There is a wealth of unsupported "freeware" solutions on the net, generally the failed result of someone trying to "roll there own" wallboard. Clearly, you always have that option if you […]