Complexity is the barrier for successfully deploying communications technology, and it's time to take a bold set forward. Slice through the complexity of unified communications (UC), and give your employees a better way to communicate and collaborate. Untangle the complexity, and you can also cut through the seemingly exorbitant operating costs.

Here are ten ways that ShoreTel simplifies UC system management.

1. The entire ShoreTel system is managed as a single unified system. With a single-image system, you have complete feature transparency and tight integration of all resources, including voicemail systems, automated attendants and automatic call distribution (ACD) systems across all locations. The ShoreTel UC system was designed for the IP age to be easy to manage with a distributed architecture that is highly reliable and ideal for multi-site, and even multivendor companies.

2. ShoreTel has plug-and-play deployment. Eliminate time-consuming manual labor with and IP phone system that configures itself. ShoreTel's management interface, ShoreTel Director, recognizes all active IP phones on the network and automatically configures them as they are plugged in. Imagine the same savings when new users are automatically assigned an extension, mailbox and auto-attendant profile the first time they access their voicemail.

3. Manage your entire phone system from any Web browser. In this digital age, it goes without saying that you must be able to manage

the entire IP phone system from anywhere, and with ShoreTel, all you need is a browser to do that. ShoreTel Directory lets you manage your system from a unified, browser based interface. It's an ideal way to manage an entire enterprise from single screen, located anywhere in your network.

4. ShoreTel is intuitively easy to use. An intuitive phone system minimizes user training requirements, reduces calls to the support desk and helps ensure widespread adoption of productivity-boosting tools. With ShoreTel Call Manger, modern-day communications are no longer a technologic mystery. Users can easily manage communications from their computers, and seamlessly move between video, voice (wired or wireless) and instant message.

5. ShoreTel addresses performance issues before they affect your network. ShoreTel System Monitor monitors your network to ensure the IP infrastructure provides the highest levels of reliability and voice quality. Any potential problems triggers an alert, so proactive steps can be taken to avoid downtime.

6. Solve problems before your employees even notice. ShoreTel's software automatically detects WAN failures and invokes PSTN bypass. With distributed messaging in ShoreTel voice appliances, there's no loss of access to the messaging system. Employees don't even notice the outage before you fix it.

7. ShoreTel adapts to network changes. At ShoreTel, they know that network change is a constant organizations of all size,

so they designed a UC system to adapt to network change. ShoreTel System Monitor detects and incorporates new or removed devices and automatically configures updates without disruption to the system—or user.

8. Easily indentify areas to optimize toll and WAN usage. Detailed accounting and indentifying bandwidth saving is simplified, even across a large enterprise, because of ShoreTel's centralized call detail reporting. With ShoreTel's reporting, you can easily see detailed activity reports to expose under-utilized trunks and network performance across WAN links to help optimize performance.

9. ShoreTel grows as your business grows. Don't bring in the forklift to replace your phone system just because your business is growing. It's wasteful and impractical in today's economic times. Instead the ShoreTel system is easily scalable to 10,000 users per instance, allowing you to grow your phone system on your terms.

10. An obsessive focus on customer satisfaction. ShoreTel has an industry-leading reputation for listening to out customers, understanding their business and responding with features and capabilities that drive value. For six years in a row independent research firm, Nemertes Research, had named Shore Tel Best Overall VoIP provider.

Ease of management is just one reason ShoreTel customers are often described as raving fans.

For more information about ShoreTel please contact LaVerne at 509-340-0298 or laverne@access-tel.com .