With Mitel acquiring ShoreTel, there has been a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in the marketplace about the ShoreTel Phone Systems. Read on to learn why the ShoreTel phone systems are not “End of Life”.
When it comes to technology the pace of change has been incredible over the last 5 years. Entire sectors of technology have been almost replaced in the blink of an eye with new technology that is changing the way businesses run. When it comes to your phone system you could always count on it outlasting every piece of technology in your office and still function at a high level for 7 to 10 years.
The phone system world has not been immune to the change and chaos of the last 5 years. It has created an entire new sector of the phone industry, the Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) Cloud phone system. This has led to all kinds of change on the premise VoIP phone system side, including many acquisitions and some shaky futures for even a big player like Avaya.
In the middle of all of this ShoreTel was acquired by Mitel, this has led to a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in the marketplace. We have heard from many of our ShoreTel customers that other providers and vendors are telling them their ShoreTel phone system is “End of Life.” This is absolutely not true!
ShoreTel is now called Mitel Connect. For all ShoreTel Phone Systems that are on an older software version Rls6-Rls14.2 you will be required to upgrade to Connect by September 30th, 2020. As part of this upgrade some customers with phone switch hardware older than 8 years will need to upgrade to newer phone switches or they can purchase Virtual licensing to move these IP phone connections to a VM server. Aside from this change all phones, software and applications will work on the new Connect Software!
Beyond this upgrade Mitel has produced new 6900 series phones for the Mitel Connect platform; they have a new Mitel Border Gateway that will allow you to connect SIP trunks, use the newer releases of Mobility, New Edge Gateway for remote users and WebRTC Gateway.
IP6900 Series Phones
https://www.mitel.com/products/devices-accessories/ip-phones-peripherals/6900-ip-series
Mitel Border Gateway
https://www.mitel.com/products/business-phone-systems/on-site/mivoice-border-gateway
For ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center users, the great news is there is a migration path to the MICC Mitel Contact Center Business platform. This solution is a huge upgrade that gives you true Omni-channel capabilities, a much larger set of reports, analytics and many new features and applications. It also has a great set of open APIs. As a bonus, Mitel has a promotion that will allow you to swap one voice Enterprise Contact Center Agent license for one MICC Voice Agent license at no cost for the software.
Beyond all these immediate available upgrades that can make your Shoretel Phone System almost brand new with access to the latest applications and features, the Mitel Connect Engineering team continues to develop new applications. On the road map is the ability for the Mitel Connect premise to connect to the Mitel Cloudlink, which is a cloud based full collaboration suite today, with video, SMS, persistent chat, integration to IoT and more. This will give you the reliability and redundancy of your premise based Connect call control, while still having access to all the latest Cloud applications.
So, you can see the rumors of the death of your ShoreTel Phone System have been greatly exaggerated by those with an alternative agenda.
As your Partner, LANtelligence, Inc is here to help you choose the right future direction for your organization. This can be upgrades and continued use of your existing ShoreTel Phone System or we can help you determine the best fit for your organization of the many UCaaS solution available as a Master Solution Provider we have access to them all. In addition, just like we have for 20 years in the network and premise solution world, we will execute on your new deployment to the cloud covering all the requirements from network to integrations.
