ShoreTel announced it is partnering with Ingram Micro and Hewlett-Packard (HP) to offer unified communications gear and services to small- to medium-size businesses (SMBs).
The solution sets will be sold through Ingram Micro’s channel partner network and will include ShoreTel cloud services and HP routers and power over Ethernet (POE) switches.
Ingram Micro has been selling the ShoreTel on-premises solution for four years, and is now certified to offer ShoreTel Sky, making it both a Valued Added Distributor (VAD) and Cloud Service Distributor (CSD).
Under the expanded agreement, Ingram Micro becomes a single source for channel partners to purchase ShoreTel communications solutions, which will be available in the third quarter.
The joint solution is called HP Networking for ShoreTel Solutions. Customers purchase the ShoreTel cloud offering and can choose from an HP Switch or both an HP switch and an HP router, depending on their needs.
The offers will be available through HP and ShoreTel channel partners that work with Ingram Micro.
“ShoreTel, HP and Ingram have had a longstanding relationship, focused until now around ShoreTel’s premises offerings,” Sam Koury, vice president of channels and strategic alliances at ShoreTel, told eWEEK.
“Over the past year we noticed an increase in the amount of inquiries from customers and partners asking if we had a joint, tested, cloud-based solution available for purchase. So ShoreTel and HP started working together to bring this UCaaS solution to market.”
Koury said the companies jointly chose Ingram Micro to go to market.
“We believe hybrid deployments will become more prevalent as a way for businesses to add cloud services,” Koury said. “We don’t think customers with on-premises UC are going to make a flash cut to cloud. Instead, many will put apps in the cloud, for instance. Or a company will deploy premises at headquarters and cloud at branch locations.”