University of Guadalajara

The University of Guadalajara is the second oldest and largest public university in Mexico. In 1994, it began an expansion that included a broad network of 14 university campuses and high schools located throughout the state of Jalisco, Mexico. Its work in the fields of science, the humanities, and technology greatly contributes to solving some of the more problematic aspects of growth in this region.

“Our Alcatel system would have required a hefty investment, even to get basic features such as voicemail and conferencing.”
- Carlos Alberto Franco Reboreda, CUAAD’s Technology Education Coordinator, University of Guadalajara.

The enormous school faced a problem: its legacy Alcatel PBX system was fast being outpaced by growing national and international student enrollment and campus expansion. Furthermore, the system's minimal features simply weren’t up to modern communications expectations, draining staff efficiency and threatening to drain future budgets. Initially, the CUAAD thought the right solution was to keep the Alcatel PBX because the infrastructure was already in place and would therefore save costs. However, it soon became clear that maintaining the legacy system had a high price tag when it came to scalability and staff productivity.

“We liked the wide variety of features on ShoreTel, including the built-in conferencing facilities, and ShoreTel Call Manager for managing calls.”
- Carlos Alberto Franco Reboreda, CUAAD’s Technology Education Coordinator, University of Guadalajara.

With the help of ShoreTel reseller and partner Initel, the CUAAD designed a three-stage implementation plan, starting with cutover of the primary main campus building to the new ShoreTel IP Phone System. Other locations will follow and the university is already implementing new extensions, with plans to increase the number of extensions in new buildings. Currently, the CUAAD uses 90 analog phones along with 60 ShoreTel IP Phones. While some employees are using ShoreTel Call Manager integrated with Microsoft^® Outlook^®, other users have a Java-based email client, which integrates seamlessly with the ShoreTel system. With ShoreTel Director, moves, adds, and changes can be made in minutes, freeing the university’s IT team to focus on its long-range communication strategy instead of daily fire-fighting. Other benefits include:

• A competitive purchase cost put the system clearly within the public university’s budgetary reach, offering more features for less money.
• Low licensing and maintenance costs add up to a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
• A rich feature set enables new efficiencies across the university’s many administrative and educational operations.
• The system, which looks and behaves like a single, unified platform, scales with plug-and-play simplicity across as many sites as needed, supporting the university’s growing role in shaping Mexico’s future.
• The university’s IT staff credit a significant increase in productivity to ShoreTel’s ease of use and quick learning curve.

“ShoreTel gives us the tools to solve problems and make users’ lives easier.”
- Carlos Alberto Franco Reboreda, CUAAD’s Technology Education Coordinator, University of Guadalajara.