Shoretel: Unified Communications Is Real At Last

So why aren’t we all doing it?

Given this shining vision, why aren’t more of us doing it? Combs admits the penetration of unified communication is still tiny. Shoretel has penetrated its IP telephony to only about two percent of desktops with IP, and yet that is enough to make it the market leader in Unified Communication desktops. “There’s still plenty of opportunity,” he says.

Why we don’t trust UC

We move to a demo and suddently I find all this confirms some of our misgivings about UC. We are shown how someone’s presence can update automatically when they are in a meeting. This sounds great, as it will prevent interruptions. But, we ask Combs, how does the system know when someone is in a meeting?

It turns out the system uses a person’s Outlook appointments to decide whether someone is available or not – regardless of what the actual situation is. Does that make sense? Well, actually, no.

When this meeting was due to start, as I say, I was at the wrong hotel, about 100 yards form where I should be. Luckily the PR rang me and told me where to head for, so no harm was done.

But supposing I’d had the Shoretel system in place. When the meeting was due to start, my phone would have gone silent, and all my calls would have gone to voicemail. I would never have got that important call from the PR, which would have redirected me. I’d still be waiting there.

Combs is unrepentant – if you use this, the Outlook calender is your boss:  “It works the way it works. It is binary.”

So on the basis of my meeting with Combs, what do I think? Combs and his colleagues – and his customers – are clearly very happy with the technology.  But it sounds to me as if UC is still struggling to model what people really want.