ShoreTel, Ingram Micro and HP have teamed up to bring unified communications offerings to the small to medium business (SMBs) market.
The trio made the announcement the ShoreTel Champion Partner Conference.
They said the new solution set, named HP Networking for ShoreTel Solutions, would be sold through Ingram Micro's channel partner network and will include ShoreTel cloud services with HP routers and POE switches.
Ingram Micro has been selling the ShoreTel on-premises solution for four years, and is now certified to offer ShoreTel Sky, making it both a Valued Added Distributor (VAD) and Cloud Service Distributor (CSD).
"Unified Communications-as-a-Service is a growing sales and ongoing service opportunity for channel partners who specialise in the IT needs and business outcomes of SMBs," says Eric Kohl, Ingram Micro Advanced Solutions executive director.
"By working closely with HP and ShoreTel, we're able to bring to market a tightly integrated, seamless, end-to-end hosted IP telephony and UC solution that is built for SMBs and easy for channel partners to market, sell and support," says Kohl.
"Our SMB customers are looking to reap the benefits of a hosted solution, and this solution complements the existing on-prem HP-ShoreTel offering and provides the network backbone for ShoreTel's complete UC-C solution," says Bob Johnson, HP Networking Americas vice president.
"This is HP's first offering for the ShoreTel Sky cloud solution and will help SMB customers realise benefits including ease of management, increased efficiency and lower costs," says Johnson.
With this joint solution, customers purchase the ShoreTel cloud offering and can choose from an HP Switch or both an HP switch and an HP router, depending on their needs.
The offers will be available via joint HP and ShoreTel channel partners who work with Ingram Micro.
"We have been working closely with Ingram Micro and HP – as a member of the HP AllianceOne Network partner program – to offer premises solutions to our joint customers, and now this is the next evolution in our relationships," says Sam Koury, ShoreTel vice president of channels and strategic alliances.
"This collaboration between leading solutions will provide the SMB marketplace a brilliantly simple way to address their core communications needs.
"Users will gain high value, productivity enhancing tools that make a difference in today's always-on workplace," says Koury.
HP Networking for ShoreTel Solutions will be available in calendar Q3 2015.
