ShoreTel goes big in hosted VoIP: A Q&A with CEO Blackmore

02.10.2012

We're on track. The first step was to integrate finance, human resources and information technology. That was done in the first three months. We're now in the process of integrating engineering and we've been public about that with employees on both sides. We'll have a fully integrated roadmap and a fully integrated engineering team by December.

Our plan is to keep go-to-market separate because if you have a product and a hardware and software product, very rarely can a sales team sell both well, so it's better to keep them separate. We do share lead generation, but everything else will be integrated by December.

How about the hybrid world? Is there a need for a mixed premise/cloud solution?

Yes, and we've actually allocated some serious engineering talent to develop a hybrid architecture. That was put in place a couple of months ago. The reason you need a new architecture is for all of the and other needs, and making sure the apps operate seamlessly. For example, if you're running a conferencing app you don't need to know whether it's being served through the cloud or served on-premise. So we are working on that. We think it's an exciting opportunity.

The first app will probably be out around July next year, and we can then also port apps that we currently have on-premise. So you can either sell a pure cloud solution, a pure premise solution or a hybrid. An application, for example, could be mobility in the cloud but everything else on-premise. Another example would be, you pick and choose around your facilities, like the headquarters could be on-premise because the CTO still believes that's the right thing, but all of the satellite offices could be in cloud and you could still do all your unified communications, sharing of information, it's seamless.