Bangalore, September. 25, 2014: 'Connecting people, wherever and however they choose' -- that's the promise of ShoreTel, a Sunnyvale, California (US)-headquartered  leader in unified communication solutions, as it sets up   a new  India  office  here, for sales, service and  R&D.
Most of the 100-strong India team led by  Satyanarayana ("Satya") Tummala, Senior Director and Head of Engineering ( India)  will  focus on development, explained President & CEO Don Joos. In pursuit of what  he characterises as  'brilliantly simple solutions', ShoreTel  chooses to employ a high proportion of its total manpower -- 35% -- in R&D.  
Just a decade after it began operating under its current name ( the company has been around since 1996), ShoreTel  has a loyal global clientele in its chosen  mid sized segment ( 5000 or less employees) to whom  the company makes a Godfather-like offer they can't refuse:  a customised combo of on-premise and hosted, cloud-driven  unified communication solutions that straddle voice, data, video -- and increasingly, mobility.
"A quality product at low TCO -- total cost of ownership" is how Don puts it -- a canny positioning in a country where 'paisa vasool' or money's worth is a mantra  for small and medium businesses.
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 Unified communications (UC) is the integration of real-time communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, telephony (including IP telephony), video conferencing, desktop sharing, data sharing (including web connected electronic interactive whiteboards), call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax). UC is not necessarily a single product, but a set of products that provides a consistent unified user-interface and user-experience across multiple devices and media-types. (From Wikipedia)
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Adds Frederic Gillant, ShoreTel's Singapore-based Vice President and Managing Director of Asia Pacific: “The new India office is another step in ShoreTel’s global expansion, and will enable us to more quickly gain market share and capitalize on new market opportunities in the region."  The company has 11 partners in India  but would continue its tried and tested model of indirect sales, he  explained.

Karnataka state Minister in charge of IT,  S R Patil, will  inaugurate thenew  facility located on the Sarjapur-Marathahalli Outer Ring Road  tomorrow.