Vendor Shores Up IP Telephony

The company's ShoreConvergedConference bridge provides both scheduled and ad hoc capabilities for its Shoreline4 IP-PBX platform, giving solution providers a means of offering in-house conferencing options to customers, said Tom van Overbeek, president and CEO of Sunnyvale-based Shoreline, which currently works with about 85 solution providers.

"It gives [our partners] a much broader product offering," van Overbeek said.

"With PBX functionality and this extended feature set, it increases the differences between [VoIP] and legacy voice technology."

The in-house conferencing option can also help solution providers more easily demonstrate return on investment to customers utilizing costly conferencing services from outside providers, he said.

Customers are already showing interest in Shoreline's new offering, said Judi Wrenn, general manager of Data Comm Networking, a Burr Ridge, Ill.-based solution provider. "When one of our first Shoreline installations found out there was a chance to beta-test this, they jumped on it right away," Wrenn said.

The Linux-based conferencing bridge will be available this month in 12-, 24-, 48- and 96-port configurations with a list price of $1,000 per port for audio conferencing. Data conferencing will cost an additional $500 per port.