HP joins UC playing field with MS Lync teammate

Interesting.

Until now, Microsoft has wanted customers to drink their Kool-aid and buy Lync servers - basically invest in the UC stack from Microsoft rather than picking and choosing different vendors for different pieces of the stack.  This is the old "Suite vs. Best of Breed" approach.

But now they're teaming with HP, which, as article author Jeffrey Burt says, "is leveraging its decades-long partnership with Microsoft to make it easier for businesses to use the software company's Lync collaboration platform, not only by integrating it into HP's router but also offering it as a cloud service."

The question now is how many organizations use HP routers?  And is it enough to cause Microsoft to stop playing ball with Cisco (which pretty much owns the router and UC markets)?

We shall see.

Interesting.