Managing director of ShoreTel South East Asia, Vasili Triant, revealed the channel expansion was on the cards after announcing a partnership with Telstra to offer ShoreTel products through its Business System program.
The Telstra deal, signed in February, came on the back of a recommendation from its local distributor, Aria Technologies.
"Aria have an existing distribution arrangement with Telstra, selling LG-Nortel products [through the Telstra channel]," Triant said.
"They wanted to go after a bigger market within Telstra and the broader market, so they picked up ShoreTel.
"Aria opened the door to Telstra but we still had to sell to Telstra on why pick up our product. We pitched the value proposition.
"The partnership validates to the rest of the market that we're a player [because] we've been endorsed by the largest telco in the country."
Triant said the company's value proposition was to offer a complete telephony product that can scale from small to very large businesses.
ShoreTel is spreading that message nationally this week via a series of roadshows with Telstra.
It is in Perth today before heading to Sydney on Wednesday, Adelaide Thursday and Melbourne on Friday.
Triant said the feedback from Telstra Business System partners had been very positive to date.
He expected the availability of ShoreTel through the Telstra channel would put it in competition with the likes of Alcatel, NEC, Cisco and Mitel, among others.
Apart from the Telstra deal, Triant said he is also focused on growing ShoreTel's own channel locally.
"My focus is really on Queensland, Sydney itself and Adelaide," he said.
"We're after a mixture of traditional telco vendors that sell PBXs and systems integrators and data vendors."
Issue: 277 | March, 2010