ShoreTel’s new Mobility solution is the holy grail of Unified Communication, allowing you to use your smartphone as the primary endpoint on your company’s pbx. That’s right – now you can use your iPhone, Blackberry or Droid cell phone as your primary extension on your company’s phone system, while retaining your own personal cell phone “identity” as well.
The solution is comprised of two parts: a hardware router that sits on the host side and a software application for the mobile device. Depending upon the manufacturer, ShoreTel either replaces or modifies the mobile device’s dialer to add pbx style functionality like a display of the user’s pbx extension and options for transfers and conferencing.
In areas where WiFi coverage is available, the ShoreTel Roam Anywhere Dialer (RAD) uses the WiFi connection to make a PBX call. The software is constantly monitoring for WiFi connections and automatially creates a VPN tunnel back to the Mobility Router – no user intervention is required.
This technology can result in massive cost savings in International roaming scenarios, because instead of connecting via the cellular network and incurring exorbitant international roaming charges, road warriors can connect via WiFi at a hotel or coffee shop and place and receive calls over a standard data connection. The technology also feature a virtually seamless handoff to 3G and 4G data networks; should the user move out of the WiFi coverage, the software automatically moves the call over to the cellular data network if there is sufficient coverage/bandwidth. After a delay of 4-5 seconds during the hand-off, the call continues uninterrupted.
In terms of useability, users can dial internal four digit extensions and the app is smart enought to know to place the call in pbx mode, which shows the user’s company caller ID. Likewise, users can flag certain contacts as personal so calls placed to those contacts go out via the regular cell phone, thus showing the caller’s cell phone caller ID.
The ShoreTel Mobility Solution doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to user presence; ShoreTel users on smart phones can display their presence just as they do on regular desktop handsets.
The best part about the ShoreTel Mobility Solution? You don’t have to have a ShoreTel system in place to take advantage of it – it works with all of the major PBX manufacturers!
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