Polycom completes acquisition of HP Visual Collaboration Business Unit

Polycom, a global leader in unified communications (UC), today announced the close of its acquisition of HP’s Visual Collaboration business, and the agreement under which Polycom will serve as an exclusive partner to HP for telepresence and certain video UC solutions, including both resale and internal HP deployments. The acquisition and agreement doubles Polycom’s immersive telepresence marketshare and further strengthens Polycom’s leadership in the UC video market, which is growing rapidly as businesses of all sizes around the world are using video collaboration as a strategic and cost-effective way to improve productivity and create high-performance workplaces. In addition to HP, Polycom works with a large and diverse channel community representing multiple routes to market, including: distribution partners, value added resellers, service providers and systems integrators. Polycom’s uncompromising commitment to open standards and 100% channel orientation remains unchanged. 

The two companies also recently agreed to make Polycom’s enterprise-grade video applications available for HP’s webOS platform, in keeping with Polycom’s commitment to enable mobile UC as a key element in its UC Everywhere vision. 

“Polycom is excited to close this acquisition and we welcome Halo customers to Polycom.  We’re looking forward to our expanded strategic relationship with HP, to offer customers an end-to-end UC solution with an unparalleled user experience, open standards-based interoperability, the industry’s best TCO, investment protection through backwards- and forwards-compatibility, and ease of deployment,” said Andrew Miller, Polycom president and CEO. “HP has enormous global reach, and our broadened relationship with the company is another important step in meeting Polycom’s commitment to bring the most advanced and innovative UC solutions to market – from mobile video applications and UC software to room and immersive telepresence solutions.  In addition, Polycom and HP share a strategic ally in Microsoft, and we believe our combined offerings will provide transformative benefits and value to customers worldwide.”

In the rapidly growing UC and telepresence markets, Polycom has emerged as a leader and continues to gain significant marketshare in both video endpoint solutions and video infrastructure. In the latest Wainhouse Research quarterly report on video conferencing and telepresence, “Wainhouse Spotcheck: Videoconferencing Q1 2011,” Polycom gained nine points  vs. the previous quarter and extended its leadership in video endpoint unit shipments to 45 percent market share in Q1 2011. Polycom also grew three points sequentially in video infrastructure revenue (Polycom offers the UC Intelligent Core platform), as the overall video infrastructure market grew at 24 percent year-over-year.

The acquisition strengthens Polycom’s leadership position in the UC and telepresence markets by bringing HP’s installed base of visual collaboration products and technology together with Polycom’s customer base – the industry’s largest at about 1 million video systems.  The acquisition includes the assets of HP’s Visual Collaboration business, including the Halo Products and Managed Services business. Polycom picks up customer sites with many Global 500 customers across 36 countries. 

For current Halo and Halo Video Exchange Network (HEVN) customers, Polycom will deliver uninterrupted services and support– providing the same quality of experience and service level agreements these customers have enjoyed and expect. Polycom is also committed to providing interoperability between Halo deployments, Polycom telepresence systems and open-standards UC systems.