ShoreTel announced today it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire M5 Networks (“M5″), a recognized leader in hosted Unified Communications. As a result of the acquisition, ShoreTel will be uniquely positioned to provide customers a choice between on-premise and hosted UC solutions.

“The acquisition of M5 positions ShoreTel as a leader in the fast-growing cloud UC market and delivers a suite of hosted telephony solutions that is unmatched in the marketplace,” said Peter Blackmore, CEO of ShoreTel. “This acquisition is a critical step in our evolution and enables the company to capitalize on trends in cloud computing and advance our enterprise communications strategy.”

“We’re eager to learn more about how these two great companies will integrate, and how we’ll be able to leverage this technology with clients that prefer a hosted or Cloud-based model for their communications systems,” said Don Gulling, CEO of Verteks Consulting. “We’re looking forward to having a ShoreTel-provided cloud communications offering, since some of our clients prefer a solution that doesn’t require up-front capital investments and is on a pay-per-user model.”

M5 pioneered hosted UC in 2000 and today provides more than 2,000 companies with enterprise-grade communications on a subscription basis. This acquisition positions ShoreTel to be a leading provider in the emerging UC as a Service market, enabling it to extend its technology and industry-leading customer satisfaction that are the hallmarks of its value proposition into the cloud through a hosted offering.

ShoreTel is acquiring M5′s entire operation including its customer base, distribution capability, and proprietary network, and will be extending offers to substantially all of its employees.

Following the close of the acquisition, M5 will be operated as a ShoreTel business unit and will be led by M5 CEO Dan Hoffman, who shares ShoreTel’s brilliantly simple approach to unified communications, and an intense focus on customer satisfaction. Hoffman will become president and general manager of the new business unit.

While the engineering teams will remain separate they will cooperate and coordinate in order to leverage the innovation and best practices of both groups so that both product roadmaps will benefit from the combined capabilities.

“M5 is proud to be one of the leaders in the UC cloud market. We have achieved this position with a very strong management team and an excellent product offering that is the simplest in the industry,” said Dan Hoffman, CEO of M5 Networks. “Joining forces with ShoreTel enables us to reach our ambitions of scale and cement our position in the hosted UC marketplace.”

Find out what Desktop Virtualization is all about and how it can save your business time and money by simplifying client computer management. Read on to find out more.

There is growing interest in Desktop Virtualization with its promise of improved manageability, security and efficiency for the business. Simply put, Desktop Virtualization is new technology that separates the system software such as the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware.

Desktop virtualization allows the hardware, like a laptop or a server, to run multiple operating systems. Imagine having your Mac running Microsoft Windows and Office, or your Dell running OS X and GarageBand for example. To stretch the concept even further, operating systems and applications can be housed on remote machines – such as a server farm in Texas – which you access via the web. The applications are not resident on your computer at all.

Desktop virtualization shifts the burden of managing the system software from you or your in-house IT teams to someone else—people who can do a better job managing and updating your Windows and Office software than you can. If you have a fairly large organization managing a large number of machines, centralizing support allows the organization to gain from economies of scale—ie less people to manage more machines at less cost. Leveraging the computing power of server farms with faster machines also allows employees to get more value out of aging desktops and laptops.

Enabling anytime, anywhere access to applications and data, Desktop Virtualization connects your employees to the tools they need no matter where they are. As organizations support more and more remote employees, using desktop virtualization technology gives them access to their Windows desktop anywhere in the world, at any time, on any device.

Are you supporting remote workers or is your hardware slowing down your employees? Let's talk about Desktop Virtualization and how you can try it for your organization today.

Did you know that our venue for this technology briefing has an incredible history?

First, the History – Jackson’s Steakhouse occupies the ground floor of the revitalized 1860s-era building that originally housed H. Pfeiffer & Company Mercantile. The building overlooks Plaza Ferdinand—where, in July 1821, General Andrew Jackson accepted the transfer of Florida from Spain to the United States and raised the American flag in Pensacola for the first time. He served briefly as governor of Florida and then returned to Tennessee with his wife Rachel. In 1828, Jackson was elected seventh president of the United States. In 1935, to commemorate this historic event, a bust of Jackson was commissioned and placed in Plaza Ferdinand.

Now, the Present – Jackson’s Steakhouse procures only Midwestern grain-fed beef from the heartland of America. The Proprietor’s Cut and fresh, local seafood are hand-selected and artistically prepared to perfection. Our great steak cuts stand tall with the superb flavor of wet-aged beef that is like no other. Over the past decade, Jackson’s Steakhouse has earned the Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator eight times. Also, as an eight-time consecutive recipient of Florida Trend magazine’s Golden Spoon Award, Jackson’s Steakhouse is considered one of Florida’s top 25 restaurants and is placed by the Distinguished Restaurants of North America in the top two percent of all fine dining restaurants in the country.

Where: Jackson’s Steak House
400 South Palafox Street
Pensacola, FL 32502
When: Thursday, February 9th @ 11:30AM
Cost: Free
RSVP: Contact Blake Ford or Jay Smith at (877) 837-8357 or e-mail us at bford@verteks.com or jsmith@verteks.com

The big difference between Android and the iOS is the fact that, on an Android device, you can play Flash videos. There are times however when this seeming advantage can be a disadvantage as Flash (such as Flash ads) can slow down your browsing experience or even crash your browser. There is a solution.

You can turn off Flash if you choose to. Simply go to your Browser's Settings by pressing on the Menu/Options button, then go to Advanced and change 'Enable plug-ins' setting from "Always on" to "On demand." Flash applications will now appear as an arrow that you must touch to start.

There are times when you may want to capture what is currently being shown on your iPad's screen. That’s easy to do on an iPad.

Simply press the Home button and then the Sleep/Wake button simultaneously. When you hear a click, the screenshot has been taken. You can then go to the photos gallery to see all of your captured screenshots.

For those of you using Google Mail or Gmail, chances are you're familiar with the "stars" feature, which serves as a visual reminder to follow up on certain messages or mark their importance. You may not know, though, that you can use different types of stars. To do so, click on the Gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen, click Mail Settings, and on the General tab look for the Stars section.

You will see many different types of stars that you can cycle through. Drag the stars between the lists that you want to use and in the order you prefer. Another neat trick is to use the name of the star to filter messages. Simply hover over the star to learn its name (i.e., "red-bang"), then use the "has" prefix to filter by star name. For example, typing "has:red-bang" in your search box will show all messages with that star name.

Did you know you can have the activity feeds/social stream or live updates from your favorite social network such as Facebook or LinkedIn appear in the latest version of Windows Live Messenger? Simply sign in to your Live Messenger account, select Add/Manager Services at the bottom right area of the application, and then choose a service you wish to integrate to (i.e., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn).

The application will ask you to sign in to the chosen service and give permission to integrate. After you have given permission, you will see updates from and be able to post to that social network in Live Messenger.

You’ve probably heard the saying “the cobbler’s children go barefoot”. So it is sometimes in our business – sometimes we get so busy, we don’t have time to implement the latest and greatest technology in house for our own use. So it was with ShoreTel’s new conferencing solution, which has been available since Q3 of last year, but which we just got around to installing for ourselves at the turn of the new year.

First let me say that I have seen and done demos of this product, but nothing really brings it home like when your boss instantly launches a screen sharing session from the ShoreTel Communicator. The slickness of being able to invite participants without having to send en email cannot be overstated. Likewise, the ability to schedule a conference call and have the system call out to the participants is realy nice – no more wondering if they lost the call in information. The drawing tools are pretty good, though not yet on par with GoToMeeting. The system’s recording feature works well, and allows you to archive sessions and play them back via a hyperlink.

With a maximum capacity of 50 audio connections and 30 web connections, the ShoreTel Conferencing Solution will accommodate most clients’ conferencing needs. Best of all, if you have the older conference bridge, ShoreTel has a very reasonable upgrade path. To learn more about the new ShoreTel Conference Solution, call Matt Nye at 877-837-8357 x1459 today.

Microsoft is helping the public understand where technology is headed in the future in a new video posted on their website recently. The video is a fascinating 5-minute look into how the latest developments in technology today will possibly appear in tomorrow's workplace.

The video from Microsoft gives us a glimpse into a day in the life of Ayla, a travelling executive, her daughter Shannon, at home with her Dad, and Qin, Ayla's colleague. The video is the latest in a series from the Microsoft Office team. You can see past videos here, or view a behind the scenes video from Kurt DelBane, Microsoft Office Business Division President, who explains the technological concepts behind the video, such as collaborative technologies, data visualization tools, mobile technologies, and cloud computing.

Interested in finding out more? Check out the actual place where this technology is developed by Microsoft demonstrating some of the video's concepts in real life.

If you own an Android phone, you can use it as a substitute for an external drive or a USB key. You can load files into your phone simply by plugging it in to a PC with a USB cable, then tapping on “Mount” when you are prompted by the system.

This mounts the internal storage of the device as an external drive relative to the PC, and you can easily drag and drop files or create folders on the device as you see fit. Of course, it is recommended you do this on the SDCard that likely came with the device, or one that you buy for your phone.