Image Gallery: ShoreTel Night at Fenway Park

ShoreTel announced in October that it would replace Avaya as the official communications provider of the Boston Red Sox beginning in the 2016 season.

Tuesday night, ShoreTel – along with partner Harbor Networks, which installed the system – and CIOs from the Red Sox and San Francisco Giants hosted press and analysts to celebrate the successful launch.

ShoreTel also provides UC for the Angels as well as the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Indians and Miami Marlins, and sources say these wins have opened doors in other MLB stadiums. Randy George, director of IT operations for the Red Sox, says the relationships among teams is highly collaborative, with IT staffs sharing frank information on what works, and what doesn’t.

ShoreTel CEO Don Joos told Channel Partners that sports and entertainment is a hot vertical for his company — and that there might be more going on than better collaboration.

“There’s a strong correlation between teams implementing ShoreTel and winning world championships,” said Joos. Sox fans hope he’s right.

Click through our image gallery to see highlights from the event and to learn more about the work ShoreTel and Harbor are doing for the Sox.

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Greg Bertschmann, president of Boston-area communications systems integrator and MSP Harbor Networks (at left, speaking with Harbor team members) said his company replaced a rack full of Avaya gear with an on-premises ShoreTel UC system. The package includes a ShoreTel IP-PBX with integrated unified communications, enterprise contact center, conferencing and mobility.

The system isn’t just in the historic Fenway Park. It’s supporting 700 phones, many of them ShoreTel mobile devices in use by Red Sox employees. Randy George, director of IT operations, showed off a pilot test, expected to be rolled out to mobile devices in suites, where fans could pull up weather, stats and other information on demand. 

ShoreTel systems will also be installed at two Florida sites, the Boca Raton team office and JetBlue Park in Ft. Myers, home of the Sox’s spring training facility, to connect all these locations on one communications network.

(left to right) Bill Schlough, SVP & CIO of the San Francisco Giants; ShoreTel CEO Don Joos; and Brian Shield, VP of Information Technology for the Red Sox, show off some serious hardware. Despite Joos’ donning a Giants ring, the Sox shut out their interleague rival 4-0.

IT at Fenway poses some unique challenges. While Meru Wi-Fi blankets the stadium and surrounding neighborhoods – George says his staff gets irate calls from neighboring buildings when they take the WLAN down for maintenance – the age of the facility makes running cable difficult. Fenway opened on April 20, 1912.

Shield said when the ShoreTel system was announced that he expected to improve employee productivity and efficiency, simplify maintenance and save at least $25,000 per year over the previous Avaya system. The Red Sox are a Microsoft shop, and integration with the team’s Microsoft CRM system was a selling point.

A high point of the event was a visit by the Red Sox’s 2013 World Series Trophy. Schlough, Shield (standing), Giants telecommunications manager Lena Boswell and George, all long-term MLB employees, show that the thrill never gets old.

In an interview at the event, Joos said that, besides sports and entertainment, ShoreTel also is seeing success with partners in the legal, professional services and financial-services verticals. 　

In particular, Joos says the ShoreTel system will support Shield’s app initiatives, which are ultimately aimed at maximizing the fan experience. The Sox just added two developers to staff.

Harbor Networks employees also took a victory lap. Harbor is a platinum ShoreTel partner focused on communications technology, and George said his IT team depends on the MSP’s monitoring services and SLAs.

Harbor runs a 24×7 service operations center, the HarborNet SOC, and also partners with Adtran, Ruckus, Cisco and others. Besides the Sox, the company provides services for the Celtics.

Pictured here are Lilly Kennedy, senior project manager, and Paul Pacheco, operations director for Harbor Networks.