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Microsoft & HP: Potential for a Very Beneficial Partnership

Last week HP and Microsoft announced...oh, you know what they announced and don't need me to repeat it for you.Highlights of other NoJitterers' commentary include Eric Krapf pointing out that the "partnership is clearly a response by both HP and Microsoft to the various needs they each have to respond to Cisco's moves." Don Van Doren sees big opportunities for HP offering assessment, architecture planning and design, and implementation and support services that are specific to Microsoft unified communications solutions. And to Michael Finneran the HP-Microsoft partnership "makes more sense than the Innovative Communications Alliance Microsoft announced with Nortel back in 2006."

I agree on all points, particularly regarding the HP relationship making much more sense than the deals Microsoft forged with Nortel and, before that, Siemens Enterprise Communications. Partnering with PBX vendors has required an awkward co-opetition arrangement in which the voice systems supplier continues selling unified communications and unified messaging solutions that directly compete with those of Microsoft. Microsoft's partnership with Aspect Software, forged last year, presented much fewer points of competition between the companies. Microsoft could deeply integrate OCS with a well-known contact center solution, while Aspect could leverage unified communications technology largely absent from its portfolio, as well as develop UC-enabled customer service solution that helped differentiate it from larger and better known rivals. (Aspect is also proving of great help to Microsoft's UC marketing initiatives. Hardly a day goes by without someone at Aspect twittering an update on the company ripping out its PBXs and replacing them with OCS, or otherwise singing Microsoft's praises.)

Microsoft's expanded relationship with HP promises to be equally fortuitous. Like Aspect, HP faces off against much larger competitors in its traditional markets. The joint-HP-Microsoft solution should help provide much needed differentiation in market segments that are quickly becoming commoditized. And with there being no meaningful overlap in the companies' products, HP should draw little ire from Microsoft as the company establishes itself as a force to be reckoned with in the communications space. Let's take a closer look at what HP and Microsoft are actually proposing:

* Microsoft and HP plan to develop end-to-end unified communications and collaboration solution made up of the two companies' software, hardware, networking gear and services. This is interesting. Pretty nebulous, but interesting. HP and Microsoft are being tightlipped when it came to details of this end-to-end solution. Presumably it would be Microsoft UC software running on HP servers connected to ProCurve switches and supported by HP services. HP and Microsoft can already deliver all this today, so hopefully there will be more to it when the solution actually hits the street. Regardless, Microsoft UC software will need to continue working across all networking systems, not just ProCurve, in order to perform properly. There's just too much of an installed base of Cisco networking gear out there for Microsoft to get too exclusive in terms of the underlying network infrastructure. So maybe this will be more of a product bundling sort of offering.

* Microsoft and HP plan to provide end point interoperability between HP Halo Telepresence Solutions and Microsoft Office Communications Server, allowing Office Communicator clients join telepresence conferences. Interestinger and interstinger. Vendors are only now starting to make their painfully closed telepresence solutions a little friendlier when it comes to interoperability with other video conferencing systems. Tandberg is delivering T3-to-Halo interoperability, and (someone please correct me if I'm wrong here) both Polycom and Tandberg's telepresence solutions interoperate with standard- and high-definition video conferencing systems. Adding Microsoft Office Communicator clients as Halo end points would be a big step forward for traditionally proprietary telepresence solutions. But Microsoft should not stop with Halo. It will be just as important to give Polycom, Tandberg, Teliris, Cisco and others the opportunity integrate with OCS as well. This would be not only be good for the customers deploying different vendors' telepresence solutions, but would also provide vendors with nice proof points as to who are truly committed to multi-vendor interoperability and who are continuing to lock in customers with proprietary technology.

* HP will "obtain Microsoft Unified Communications qualification for new IP desk phones." HP desk phones? Who saw that one coming? The fact that OCS desk phones even exist is often treated like a dirty little secret by Microsoft executives who continue to insist that a PC client is the only telephony interface anyone will ever need. There's the "Tanjay" IP phones that Polycom and Nortel make, and snom OCS Edition is an option as well. But HP getting into the commodity IP phone business? It will be interesting to see what the company comes up with. Will this be yet another Microsoft-designed, partner-delivered Tanjay-type of device, or something quite different? Regardless, OCS desperately needs more options when it comes to IP desk phones. Not USB peripherals, but honest-to-goodness desk phones that work when my PC is rebooting, when IT's doing maintenance on my laptop, when some busy little app is hogging CPU resources, and so forth. Not everyone in the enterprise will necessarily need a physical handset, but many people will and they'll need more options than are presently available.

* HP will offer professional and managed services around Microsoft OCS, as well as target service providers looking for a hosted UC platform on which to base SMB-related services. As I mentioned HP Services already offers services around OCS, but I suppose the point here is that there will be more of them. Good news for Microsoft which relies on third parties for services. Fantastic for HP, which will expand its UC service portfolio. Not so hot, though, for Aspect Software which has spent the past year investing in OCS-related services of its own. (Thanks to Blair Pleasant for pointing that out on Twitter.) Nortel, too, planned to pick up a considerable amount of services business from its strategic partnership with Microsoft. So, while there's nothing inherently wrong with HP expanding its UC services, the move could contribute to Microsoft's other business partners getting left in the lurch. Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brian_riggs