HP delivers business continuity for Unified Communications

HP has announced integrated, easy-to-use and simple-to-manage solutions designed to improve communications among employees, customers and citizens.

Today’s highly distributed workforce has caused organizations to adopt new communication tools like voice, video, instant messaging and shared desktop capabilities that deliver seamless, effective communication across multiple applications and geographies. The adoption of these technologies has highlighted the failure of siloed application infrastructures and legacy networks to cope with the demand of new tools.

Announced at Enterprise Connect, HP’s new open standards-based multiservice routers (MSR) include HP MSR Survivable Branch Communications Module (SBM)—the industry’s firstcomplete business continuity solution—and the new HP MSR Open Architecture Platform (OAP) with VMware vSphere Series. These solutions streamline and simplify communications through true interoperability with Microsoft® and cloud-based platforms, enabling organizations to improve productivity, reduce cost and complexity.

“The onslaught of varied communications tools, coupled with an increasingly distributed workforce, has created complex infrastructure challenges for organizations that legacy networks just can’t handle,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager, Networking, HP. “HP’s solutions enable organizations to create a highly collaborative, productive environment with unified communications, delivering the best employee experience no matter what device they use or where they work.”

Maintain productivity during a network outage
While communication is critical to employee productivity, the new capabilities of voice over a data network require the underlying network to deliver secure, reliable voice services across the organization.

The HP MSR SBM comes with Microsoft Lync Survivable Branch software preinstalled into the hardware to create a single, highly modular system for real-time, rich communication, even when a wide area network (WAN) or corporate network is unavailable. It also allows for rapid integration with a customer’s network and Microsoft Lync solution, greatly simplifying deployments.

The SBM capabilities integrated into the HP MSR30 and MSR50 Series routers deliver high-performance converged routing, switching, wireless, security and voice services for branch networks. Plus, the solution combines storage, Gigabit Ethernet and USB network interfaces to reduce the network’s physical footprint, power consumption, cabling and overall costs.

HP is in the process of submitting the HP MSR Series voice gateways for qualification with the Microsoft Lync Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program (UCOIP) to ensure that the routers can make and send calls over the public switch telephone network (PSTN). HP also is a Microsoft Lync Certified Support Partner for Microsoft Lync, enabling customers to have a single source of support for IT environments running Microsoft Lync.

Reduce network complexity with smaller footprint
The new HP MSR OAP with VMware vSphere Series integrates third-party applications on HP MSR30 and MSR50 Series routers. This allows virtualized services to be delivered on one platform, eliminating the need to purchase additional hardware.

The first HP AllianceONE application supported on HP MSR OAP is the Riverbed® WAN optimization solution, which typically increases application performance by five to 50 times and, in some cases, by up to 100 times, providing fast and reliable access to cloud services. To simplify and speed the deployment of the solution, HP Technology Services offers design, deploy and support services.

Greater productivity through unified communications and mobility consulting
To deliver the universal access enterprises require, HP Technology Services is offering the HP Mobility Transformation Experience Workshop. This interactive, full-day workshop is led by HP consultants and helps align key IT and business stakeholders to build a unified communications and mobility vision that uses HP’s deep experience to solve customer problems.

Topics include redefining productivity, enabling unified communications and delivering connectivity. The workshop helps customers identify immediate priorities that can be implemented quickly while also recommending next steps. This starts customers on their journey to enabling an improved user experience, while streamlining communications and improving employee productivity.

Communication without the infrastructure costs
The new HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Unified Communications is a unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) offering that combines HP Enterprise Services’ deep experience in deploying Microsoft Lync in a high-availability architecture with centralized 24/7 monitoring of communication quality and performance.

HP is further enabling users to quickly deploy real-time unified communications with newly enhanced HP 4120 IP phones that provide easy access to Microsoft Lync and cloud-based offerings, all hosted by HP private cloud for connectivity anytime, anywhere—without the need for on-premises infrastructure. Users are able to log in to their Microsoft Lync user account directly through the phone by entering their PIN, granting access to voice mail, personal contacts and any customized user profile settings.