ShoreTelOne Conference - Quick Take
/Day 1 of ShoreTel's Global Partner Conference was quite good, and I'll be doing more writing about it over the next few days. We heard a lot about their vision for the cloud and platform-based solutions, and it's a familiar theme given the many conferences I've attended over the past few months. All the vendors are under the same pressures to adapt, and these changes really have become table stakes for staying in the game.
As with other vendors, this is a big shift from what ShoreTel has been really good at, and the big challenge lies in how well the channel community embraces these changes. I've been to several ShoreTel events, and a common thread has been a passion from the partners for working with ShoreTel. There's a lot of social capital and goodwill here, and that's a strong foundation to build on.
Over the rest of the conference, I'll have a better sense about how willing and able they'll be to follow ShoreTel's lead. There's certainly been an "adapt or die" theme here, but a lot of unknowns in terms of what end customers will ultimately end up deploying. Stay tuned. Until then, here are few pix from the event.