HP announced two new offerings that facilitate the rapid adoption of unified communications (UC) solutions, helping clients more quickly realize enhanced productivity and improved responsiveness to customers through UC.
The new offerings include HP AppSystem for Microsoft® Lync, a turnkey platform designed to expedite UC deployments, and a customizable HP and Polycom® Rich Media Communications (RMC) solution for greater visual collaboration.
To meet the growing demand for immediate, reliable access to resources and information, HP recognizes that organizations need unified mobile and virtual workplace solutions that enable employees to efficiently communicate.
To help organizations quickly embrace UC, HP is enabling clients to quickly and cost-effectively deploy Polycom RealPresence® video solutions and Microsoft Lync, a UC solution that offers audio, video, web and instant messaging capabilities.
HP AppSystem for Microsoft Lync is an integrated UC platform built on HP Converged Infrastructure. The solution is preconfigured for rapid deployment of Microsoft Lync, allowing clients to quickly realize greater collaboration between employees, partners and customers. The offering also includes assessment, deployment and support services to help ensure the platform is quickly up and running.
This integrated, scalable solution is designed to reduce implementation time and costs by offering extensive testing that ensures multivendor interoperability. Combined with HP services expertise, HP AppSystem for Microsoft Lync enables clients to achieve faster time to value.
It helps to achieve enhanced collaboration with the Polycom RealPresence video solutions and Polycom RealPresence Collaboration Server to provide presence-based virtual meeting rooms.
It reduces costs with comprehensive public switched telephone network connectivity options, eliminating the need for costly rate interfaces. Options include state-of-the-art SIP Trunks from solutions provider ACME Packet, which allow external communication via IP, as well as an Audiocodes Mediant gateway that offers time-division multiplexing connectivity with a client’s existing legacy infrastructure.
Top-line support streamlines UC adoption is designed to help clients rapidly respond to changing market demands and improve the user experience, HP offers a portfolio of support and consulting services. These services help enable clients to rapidly deploy UC solutions, as well as optimize and secure their network. HP expertise aligns IT with business or government goals to create a clear transformation path for clients while ensuring pervasive user adoption through comprehensive training.
“Unified communications is an attractive option to help increase collaboration and productivity, but not all companies have the IT support to manage deployment and integration with their present IT environments,” said Giovanni Mezgec, general manager, Lync, Microsoft Corp. “HP’s solution helps to support these organizations.”
The HP and Polycom RMC solution combines HP Networking products based on the HP FlexNetwork architecture with Polycom RealPresence video solutions built on the Polycom RealPresence Platform, which provides comprehensive software infrastructure for universal video collaboration. Clients can easily prepare and install network video capabilities from desktop to conference room and immersive suites.
HP and Polycom RMC is open standards based, interoperable and extensible offering that enables easy integration into an organization’s existing multivendor environment. In addition, it has built-in multilayer security to protect users’ video streams and applications.
“Like any corporate, international organization, we can become more efficient in terms of time and travel costs if we use videoconferencing and improve communication technology,” said Steve Grive, director, Information Communications Technology, University of the West of England. “HP consultants are helping us to achieve that.”