ShoreTel recently announced the availability of ShoreTel Mobility 6 and ShoreTel Conferencing — two new releases optimized for turning the Apple iPad into a business communications tool. These solutions enable integrated collaboration capabilities, increased accessibility and improved communications, regardless of the user’s location.

ShoreTel Mobility 6 delivers a native iPad user interface for enabling multi-modal communications. Users place and receive calls with their business persona (desk phone caller ID), exchange instant messages, listen to voice mail messages and even create multi-party calls by simply dragging names from enterprise directories together with a swipe of the finger.

“We’ve seen widespread endorsement of BYOD initiatives across the board,” said Michael Finneran, principal at dBrn Associates. “And based on our latest research, Apple devices appear to be coming into the enterprise at almost twice the rate of Android. ShoreTel’s focus for making mobile applications easy to use could lead to higher user adoption.”

ShoreTel Conferencing for iOS further extends the communications experience with application collaboration capabilities. Users easily share presentations controlled by their iPad or iPhone with remote participants; or can view shared desktops of their colleagues’ PC and Macs.

The combined applications from ShoreTel make the Apple iPad a fully featured business-grade communications device that is brilliantly simple to operate. Users place calls from their iPad using the speaker or a Bluetooth headset, with the same caller ID as their desk phone. Security is assured with integrated VPN SSL encryption that is automatically enabled for the user.

“The Apple iPad has quickly become the most popular tablet brought by users into the workplace,” said Peter Blackmore, chief executive officer, ShoreTel. “ShoreTel transforms the iPad into a true multi-modal business communications device – for placing and receiving calls just like a desk phone, for sending and responding to instant messages, and for easily collaborating with other PC, Mac and iPad users. By combining these applications together in a manner that is brilliantly simple for employees to use, businesses can feel comfortable supporting a BYOD policy to drive effective communications and enhance productivity.”