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Managed IT service desk vendor Applaud Services recently partnered with unified communications solutions provider ShoreTel (News - Alert). Together, the two companies plan to offer their clients IP and business communications infrastructure.

Applaud's decision to choose ShoreTel over other unified communications solutions providers was not arrived at lightly. The vendor spent a year and a half reviewing and considering ShoreTel, ultimately choosing the company based on its extensive and well-regarded product suite.

Going forward, ShoreTel will enable Applaud to provide its customers in the private and public sectors with flexible UC solutions capable of scaling from 20 to 20,000 users in a single platform. Furthermore, Applaud's customers can now also remotely monitor and manage their ShoreTel IP and business communications infrastructure by way of Applaud's cloud offering.

Also as part of the partnership, Applaud will deploy ShoreTel's system internally for its own telephony and contact center requirements, while also becoming part of the ShoreTel Champion Partner Program. The program provides Applaud with access to training and certification, market support and sales incentive drives.

“In recent years, our Applaud solution consulting expertise has matured and VoIP is playing an ever increasingly important part in our clients’ integrated cloud strategy aimed at improving overall business efficiency,” said Ricci Danieletto, managing director at Applaud Services. “At the same time, our managed services delivery model is also inheriting an increasing amount of VoIP responsibility from clients who either want to refresh and upgrade existing infrastructure or forge new applications through an integrated unified communications platform.”

In October, Applaud selected BMC Software's Remedy IT Service Management (ITSM) solution based on its scalability and alignment with Applaud's goals. Currently, the company is running two instances of the BMC Remedy ITSM.

Around the same time, during ITEXPO (News - Alert) Austin 2012, ShoreTel president and CEO Peter Blackmore delivered a stirring keynote address at the conference, proclaiming that the next 20 months will see more change in VoIP than ever before.

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