Softcat, Solar and Incom get ShoreTel cloud nod

ShoreTel EMEA boss says new cloud solution will satisfy demands of mid-market firms with 50 to 5,000 seats

ShoreTel has signed Softcat, Solar Communications and Incom as the maiden partners for its new ShoreTel Cloud for Partner solution, which it claims will satisfy the desire among mid-market customers for hybrid comms.

Talking to CRN, Adrian Hipkiss, EMEA vice president at ShoreTel, said the solution will enable resellers to offer ShoreTel contact centre and unified communications technology as a service but without having to install and manage it in their own datacentres.

The new scheme permits some capex purchases to be mixed with the opex spending model, so end users can deploy a hybrid cloud and on-premise solution if they wish.

Softcat, Solar and Incom worked with ShoreTel to develop the solution, which will now be opened to ShoreTel's wider channel, Hipkiss said.

While the on-premise comms market is flat or even declining and cloud-based comms is growing at 20 to 25 per cent, many mid-market customers are demanding a hybrid solution combining both delivery mechanisms, Hipkiss claimed.

"Customers in the 50 to 5,000-seat space are looking for choice," he said.

"They have worked out that cloud solutions are really great at fixing certain business problems, and premises solutions are great at fixing other business problems. They want to deploy a hybrid solution where the user experience is consistent across the entire organisation."

The ShoreTel Cloud for Partner solution is built on ShoreTel's 14.2 virtualised IP PBX offering, which some partners have in the past used to deliver a cloud solution from their own datacentre, Hipkiss said.

"Building a datacentre is not something all channel partners have the ability or funding to do," he said.

"But that same community is absolutely seeing demand for cloud solutions so we are delivering it to them and de-risking it. We do all of it – we create, manage and support it and invoice the partner for the service so they can build that into their overall managed service."

Later in the summer, ShoreTel will launch Connect, which unifies its 14.2 on-premise solution and Sky cloud offering (which it inherited through its 2012 acquisition of M5) on one operating platform.

The fact ShoreTel Cloud for Partner is built on 14.2 means partners will be familiar with the interface and can skill up easily, Hipkiss said.

"But once Connect is available, we will make the cloud solution available on 14.2 and Connect," he explained.

"We have been working on that [Connect] for 18 months as we know our future lies in providing partners with a single operating platform."