HP, Microsoft unify communications efforts

Jake Widman
Wednesday, 20 May 2009 02:43

IT Industry - Strategy

At the Interop conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft and HP announced a "strategic global initiative" to jointly develop their unified communications and collaboration solutions.

The two companies plan to devote up to $180 million to devloping and marketing an end-to-end solution including software and hardware, networking, and services.

The announcement referred to Forrester Research data that indicates that the unified communications and collaboration market will grow at a rate of 35.9 percent through 2015.

"[Our two companies] are offering the extensive breadth of capabilities of our respective technologies to deliver a truly unified communications and collaboration solution to help our customers improve business productivity," said Stephen Elop, president, Microsoft Business Division, Microsoft. "This means one click to communicate, one click to conference, one click to collaborate."

The joint development will cover Microsoft's SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, and Office Communications Server and HP's ProCurve network products.

HP's dx9000 TouchSmart PC, new IP desk phones, and some smartphones will be qualified for Microsoft's Unified Communications Server.

And Microsoft's Office Communications Sever conferencing will work with HP's Halo Telepresence solutions, so that participants with Communications Server-enabled PCs can join teleconferences.

CONTINUED Page 2.