Microsoft hooks up with HP on unified comms

The deal, which will see up to $180 million in joint investments funneled into it, will purportedly span everything from messaging, to video conferencing to telecommunications as well as spawn a smorgasbord of devices and connected apps.

"Truly unified communications," said Microsoft business division president, Stephen Elop, "means one click to communicate, one click to conference, one click to collaborate."

What this means is that Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server, Exchange Server and Office Communications Server will all have to play nice with HP's ProCurve, and HP will have to get itself a Microsoft unified communications qualification for its IP desk phones, smartphones and the HP dx9000 TouchSmart Business PC too.

In addition, HP will have to update its Business Technology Optimisation (BTO) service to support Microsoft Office Communications Server.

Also, seeing as it's a "strategic global partnership" as opposed to just any old casual coupling, the pair will be blissfully hammering out product development, integration, services , marketing and even sales together.

This also means HP and the Vole will be pooling hardware, networking, software and services to bring us unified communications with all the security and stability of Windows for your phone system.