ShoreTel: “Docking station enables employees to ‘undesk’ their desk phone.”
Yesterday, ShoreTel announced ShoreTel Dock, a docking station for iPhones and iPads that enables them with the functionality traditionally associated with deskphones. While there has been a lot of development in mobile device management and in apps for mobile devices to leverage business cloud services, actually enhancing the devices themselves to provide some of the business user pain points when migrating from desk phones has been neglected.
Users slide iPhones and iPads running ShoreTel’s Mobility app into the dock and get the comfort of a regular phone handset for making longer calls, improved speakerphone capabilities, and improved call quality. The dock also charges the phone, so employees have a full battery when they leave the office. Instant messaging (IM), presence and conferencing are enhanced by ShoreTel conferencing applications.
Pejman Roshan, ShoreTel VP of product management, says: “We didn’t try to change or replace devices users already love, but instead enabled those same devices with enterprise UC to give end users a dynamic productivity tool that supports their own work rhythm.”
Since ShoreTel Mobility works over both Wi-Fi and cellular, users can be reached on their same extension whether they are working at their office or at home. The ShoreTel Dock is planned to be available Q3 2013 for both premises-based and cloud platforms. The announced version of the dock works with older-version iOS devices, but a lightning-pin adapter version is expected, as is an eventual version for Android-based devices, although the wide variety of form factors and manufacturers for Android-based devices could make that a bigger challenge.
