The big UC news out of last week’s InterOp show in Las Vegas was a four-year global initiative between HP and Microsoft to deliver an end-to-end unified communications and collaboration solution. The companies plan to invest up to an additional $180 million in product development, professional services, as well as joint sales and marketing, to stake out a larger share of the burgeoning UC market. The Frontline Partnership, as it is called, was announced during Tuesday’s keynote address by Marius Haas,
Senior Vice President and General Manager of
HP ProCurve Networking.

Mr. Haas was joined on stage by Ann Livermore, Executive VP for HP’s Technology Solutions Group, and Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division. In case the point was lost on anyone, Mr. Elop held up what he called a “generic SIP handset” which everyone recognized as a Cisco model, and went on to compare the cost to an HP netbook computer.

Manfred Arndt, HP Distinguished Technologist for UC Solutions, notes that this agreement is an expansion of his company’s existing relationship with Microsoft.  They intend to provide HP products are configured and tested to work cleanly with the Microsoft tools. By merging Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) UC platform with HP’s PC, Halo videoconferencing, and ProCurve wired and wireless infrastructure products they intend to provide a full line alternative to Cisco. Along with their other OCS-focused products, HP intends to deliver OCS desk sets later this year.

HP is clearly making the point that with Microsoft as a partner, they intend to become a serious challenger to Cisco not only in wired and wireless infrastructure products, but in VoIP and UC as well. HP also signed up for the prime booth location, right inside the main entrance to the show floor; Cisco’s booth was off to the right.

The big questions going forward will be how big an impact this will have and how soon. Certainly this partnership makes more sense than the Innovative Communications Alliance Microsoft announced with Nortel back in 2006. Soon thereafter Microsoft was advancing the idea that OCS would effectively incorporate PBX functionality and eventually eliminate the PBX business entirely; that sounds like those female black widow spiders that kill their beaus after mating. Mr. Arndt notes, there is almost no overlap between the HP and Microsoft product lines, and if they can effectively link HP computer, video, and infrastructure products to an EDS designed Microsoft UC solution, it could certainly help their market share.

As in everything, the outcome will come down to execution. It’s no secret that Microsoft’s OCS can be deployed on a Cisco infrastructure, so the key for HP and Microsoft will be to make the whole more than the sum of its existing parts. Pre-testing and pre-configuring components is a simple and obvious step. To really demonstrate value however, they will have to creatively couple the platforms and infrastructure elements to deliver a better overall range of user capabilities, and leverage the EDS assets to develop and deliver a solution that “optimizes business processes” (to steal a phrase from Marty Parker).

The good news is that UC was much in evidence at InterOp, and now we may have another significant player to watch in HP.