The focus of this newsletter will be on a Microsoft and HP partnership announced last week at Interop 2009 in Las Vegas. As alliances go, this one could have a notable effect on the unified communications market because the plans call for a $180 million investment and collaboration on products, services, sales and support across a wide variety of the Microsoft and HP portfolios.

"Customers can lower costs and rapidly enhance employee productivity with unified communications and collaboration from HP and Microsoft," said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP, in a statement. Stephen Elop, president, Microsoft Business Division, added, "This means one click to communicate, one click to conference, one click to collaborate."

To forward collaborative product development, the two companies will form joint teams that will work together on products and services for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office Communications Server, as well as HP ProCurve networking products.

HP will also obtain Microsoft Unified Communications qualification for the HP dx9000 TouchSmart Business PC, select smartphones, and new IP desk phones. HP Business Technology Optimization software will enhance support for Microsoft Office Communications Server, providing real-time quality of service metrics for the voice and video.

In addition, the two companies will provide "endpoint interoperability with HP Halo Telepresence Solutions and Microsoft Office Communications Server-based unified conferencing, enabling remote participants at any Microsoft Office Communication Server-enabled PC to join telepresence conferences," according to the companies' joint statement.

Microsoft and HP will also offer professional services to service providers and enterprises across a range of business productivity solutions, and HP will dedicate a global professional service team to support the initiative. Cooperation in sales and marketing activity will include will dedicated salespeople provided by both companies, and plans call for several thousand technical and delivery personnel to be trained on the joint solution.

Next time: more Interop 2009 highlights.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.