Cisco Systems' channel chief has responded to the $180 million joint investment Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have made to offer unified communications solutions and services.
In a blog post on Cisco's channel blog, Keith Goodwin, Cisco's senior vice president of worldwide channels, said the HP-Microsoft pairing "confirms what Cisco and our channel partners have known for years ... the network is critical."
At Interop Las Vegas 2009 last month, HP and Microsoft revealed a four-year plan to invest $180 million globally in unified communications and collaboration solutions and services, building off the two companies' 20-plus-year Frontline Partnership. HP and Microsoft said the $180 million investment will go toward product development, professional services and joint sales and marketing.
Goodwin wrote that Microsoft and HP expanding their alliance acknowledges that interoperability is key to tying together unified communications and collaboration solutions leveraging data, voice and video.
"This news only serves to solidify our commitment to deliver"with our channel partners—an open, interoperable solution with companies like Microsoft, Apple and IBM," Goodwin wrote.
According to Goodwin, Cisco is the only company that currently offers customers a seamless collaboration experience through software, devices, networking, interoperability and channel partner expertise.
"Time will tell if HP and Microsoft's joint $180 million investment will be enough in terms of development and integration to fix the holes in their combined portfolio," Goodwin wrote. "This leaves customers to decide if they want to wait for a combined solution from HP/Microsoft or deploy a proven, interoperable Unified Communications solution from Cisco today."
And while both HP and Microsoft have said the products and services born of their unified communications and collaboration alliance will be sold through the channel, Goodwin questioned exactly how deep the channel's role will be.
"As for channel partners, I'm not sure what their role is in this expanded alliance; it appears, per the press release, HP would handle most of the deployment and professional services for the joint solution," he concluded.
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