HP-Polycom Partnership May Boost Lync Adoption: Page 2 of 2

HP and Polycom both have strong partnerships with Microsoft. In July 2011, Polycom introduced a videoconference system with Lync built in.

HP and Polycom have an interesting history together, especially since HP sold its Visual Collaboration assets to Polycom in 2011, including its high-definition videoconference product called Halo. While Halo had been compared to Cisco’s well-known TelePresence offering, Forrester’s Dewing said at the time that HP did relatively little to promote it.

But in another aspect of the 2011 deal, Polycom became the exclusive partner for video collaboration with HP, both for its internal use as well as to HP’s global customer base, John Antanaitis, VP of solutions marketing for Polycom, says, "So, [this week’s announcement] is a natural extension of a relationship that’s already in place."

In addition to the Rich Media Communications Solution, HP announced the HP AppSystem for Lync combined with Polycom RealPresence Video. The AppSystem is based on HP’s Converged Infrastructure approach to combine networking, storage, servers and services into a scalable platform for, in this case, delivering Polycom and Lync, HP’s Nielsen explains.

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