Set Your Course to ShoreTel for Legacy PBX Migration

Organizations face some tough decisions about the most effective migration path from their legacy PBXs to a modern, IP communications system. In our still-struggling economy, few businesses can afford to rip and replace a technology, even one as central to business productivity as the phone system.

For Nortel customers, the decision is even more pointed since they must decide whether Avaya's plans to sandwich SIP into their communication systems is a viable solution. However, limited IT resources and an uncertain upgrade path going forward shouldn't mean that organizations have to make bitter sacrifices that risk diminishing productivity and business value.

"Businesses may have been well-served by their legacy PBX vendors for many years, but they are seeing an opportunity to set a course to an open IP communications technology," said Bernard Gutnick, senior director of product marketing at ShoreTel. "Organizations should realize that they have options and avenues to move forward, rather than being limited to the solutions from their existing provider."

A Brilliantly Simple Migration
ShoreTel's 360 Legacy Migration Program offers flexibility and performance, without sacrifices. Organizations can combine strong product investments into an integrated portfolio, and migrate multiple locations as time and budget permit. They gain the modern communications tools they need at the locations they want and on their own schedule.

ShoreTel offers organizations the advantages of modern-day call control and unified messaging, while retaining their traditional PBXs where it makes sense. With ShoreTel, organizations can salvage their legacy PBXs investment, while migrating to a feature-rich UC system.

"The ShoreTel 360 Legacy Migration Program includes implementation resources for deploying a suite of applications, including unified communications (UC), unified messaging, multichannel contact center, conferencing and collaboration, personalized communications and mobility services, along with enterprise resource management tools," Gutnick explained. "Based on open standards, ShoreTel consolidates and simplifies enterprise-wide communications with coordinated dial plans, trunking services, and employee database management across disparate systems."

ShoreTel supports various deployment modes ranging from basic to highly sophisticated, such as:

• Tie-line integration that supports coordinated dial plans and allows PBX users to easily call anyone in their organization. Enterprises consolidate trunking services for multiple sites, resulting in reduce network service costs.
• Voicemail replacement in which the locations with the legacy PBXs continue to use the features of the old PBX, but upgrade their legacy voicemail with ShoreTel unified messaging. This offers the advantage of using ShoreTel's advanced capabilities for all users across the entire enterprise.
• Full ShoreTel UC integration where the multi-location enterprise has a mixed environment with ShoreTel at some locations, while the old legacy PBXs stay in place at other locations as part of a planned migration that can occur over time. Every user, across all locations, gets the benefits of the ShoreTel UC experience, abandoning the legacy PBX features while the business reclaims the use of the legacy PBX for the desktop phone.

"ShoreTel's advantage is its brilliant simplicity. The overall repeatability, ease of management, and flexible migration options speak for themselves," said Gutnick.

Successful migrations include SEH America, a leading supplier of silicon wafer technologies, which integrated its ShoreTel solutions with legacy Nortel systems that serve more than 800 employees on its main campus. "By leveraging ShoreTel's open interfaces, we provide new unified communications applications to our employees as we migrate to a pure IP solution over time," said Kenton Dolan, system administrator at SEH America. "ShoreTel's simplified administration has reduced complexity and support costs immensely. Our employees rave about the new communications applications, resulting in higher productivity, mobility and accessibility."

Organizations can work with their resellers to implement a well-planned transition over time from their legacy PBXs to an all-IP unified communications system.

Contact a local ShoreTel reseller now and set your course to modern IP communications.