Gensler

Gensler is one of the world’s largest architecture firms, with a portfolio of spectacular design projects including environmentally-conscious LEED pedigreed airports and groundbreaking mixed-use projects to sleek towers and well-orchestrated planned communities. Founded in 1965, Gensler is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with more than 30 offices and 2,500 professionals located across five continents.

“ShoreTel is becoming the Apple Computer of the phone systems—focused on the end user interface and simplicity. That’s what I rely on ShoreTel to do for us. ShoreTel is less expensive and simple. It’s about total cost of ownership.”

— Bruce Bartolf, Principal and Chief Technology Officer at Gensler

While Gensler’s business was booming, its existing Nortel Meridian PBX phone systems were aging. The firm was expanding into new geographies, new offices, and was making many phone changes and moves. The PBX inventory began falling outside active support, even though Gensler was still under contract with Nortel. Then, when the global economic downturn forced Gensler to trim its workforce by one-third, Bartolf was left with 1,000 extra phones and a need for extensively flexible telephony.

“We needed to move toward a voice over IP platform that would be reliable, easy to manage and allow for efficient communication, regardless of where and how we grow. A new solution would also need to integrate with Nortel at least for the remainder of that contract, and we were very interested in superior voice quality, too.”

— Bruce Bartolf, Principal and Chief Technology Officer at Gensler

Gensler selected a ShoreTel UC Solution to deploy across its organization, including more than 3,400 ShoreTel IP Phones, ShoreTel Communicator, and ShoreTel Voice Switches. The initial focus was integration with an existing Nortel contract. Over time, Gensler methodically deployed ShoreTel throughout every location, replacing all Nortel equipment.

Benefits include:

• 90% reduction in maintenance costs
• 50% reduction in IT staff required to manage phone system worldwide
• Ability to easily scale up or down to accommodate changes in business
• Greater availability of global phone systems, with ShoreTel’s fully distributed IP-based architecture, automatic failover, and redundancy

“The great story here is that we gained a phenomenally easy-to-manage, feature-rich VoIP system that is less expensive to operate and scale, which really helps during economic downturns—and upturns as well. Having a reliable system is important. Our customers are Fortune 500—they expect us to do things on a big scale. ShoreTel is a huge benefit. ”

— Bruce Bartolf, Principal and Chief Technology Officer at Gensler