IP telephony and American politics converged last week when the presidential debate hosts at St. Anselm College in Manchester N.H., turned to a ShoreTel IPT system to strategize and report on all the happenings. The system was specifically deployed for the event and was used by the presidential candidates and their staffs, plus the on-site news reporters and the host college staff before, during, and after the debate.

When the debates concluded, we talked with Chad Ives, director of sales and marketing for ShoreTel VAR Omnia Technologies, who was locally responsible for the project. According to Ives, one reason ShoreTel was selected was because the college needed a system that could eventually replace its legacy Siemens PBX and support the 1,200 stations the campus would need as it moved to IPT. The college also needed a system that would interoperate with the Siemens PBX during the transition to IPT. The system had to be deployed in a matter of weeks and work with PAETEC SIP trunks supplied over a Metro Ethernet connection, providing at least 120 SIP trunk lines.

Ives noted that the time from decision to deployment was a short four weeks, and that once the IP phones and ShoreTel IPBX were hooked up on-site to the trunk line, the whole system was up and running in less than three minutes. Of course the three-minute configuration was preceded by a data and voice network assessment conducted by Omnia Technologies, along with a lot of preplanning to make sure the installation went smoothly.

While we’ll leave out any political commentary about the debates, we are impressed with the speed of successfully deploying the IPT solution, giving credence to ShoreTel’s claims about making its VoIP solution easy to manage.

Press Contacts: Chad Ives (888) 417-1968 x217