PALO ALTO, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — March 22, 2010 — HP (NYSE: HPQ) today expanded its Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) services portfolio with offerings that help clients simplify and integrate business communications to lower costs and accelerate growth.

New HP UC&C consulting services take a comprehensive approach to transforming enterprise communications from strategy through implementation, and across people, process and technology. HP helps clients plan strategically, targeting a company’s long-term vision while implementing short-term steps to ensure end-user adoption and maximum program success.

Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL), a world leader in product safety testing and certification, is working with HP on a two-year project to standardize processes and technologies. This transformation will allow them to speed knowledge sharing and collaboration between workers and clients. With a UL Virtual Workplace console on every desktop, connected through the company’s new UC&C infrastructure, employees can collaborate with clients around the world without being constrained by medium, location or device.

“We want to become integral to the way manufacturers develop their products and collaborate with our customers as never before,” said Christian Anschuetz, senior vice president and chief information officer, Underwriters Laboratories Inc. “As our global systems integrator and strategic partner, HP is working with us in a highly collaborative fashion to plan, design and orchestrate the rollout of our UL Virtual Workplace solution.”

HP UC&C Business Value Services and HP UC&C Education Services help clients transform the workplace into a unified, connected and collaborative environment that lowers operating costs and drives business growth. The new services include:

• HP UC&C Transformation Workshop – Experiential workshop that helps client stakeholders look at all business, financial, technical and company-specific implications and opportunities around UC&C to gain consensus then build a strategy to support business objectives.
• HP UC&C Business Value Assessment – Takes clients through building a cost-analysis model for a UC&C solution investment to understand the business value and cost reductions that could be gained.
• HP UC&C Business Benefits Workshop – Helps clients build a business case for a UC&C solution to ensure it will deliver on expected benefits. Identifies the linkage to strategic initiatives, determines justification for technology investments and creates a defined roadmap for project implementation with cost estimates.
• HP UC&C Strategic Architecture Service – Speeds delivery while reducing risk and costly technology redundancies. Clients receive an architectural blueprint and detailed transformation plan that identifies their unique requirements to determine priority and value for each element of the design.
• HP Education Services for Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Live Meeting 2007 – Ensure employee adoption and productivity, and that technical staff can support the solution, improving return on investment of the technology.

HP also has signed global agreements with Polycom and Network Equipment Technologies to offer clients broad choice in UC&C technology options.

• HP Polycom Services – delivers voice and visual communication solutions from Polycom to simplify business communications while speeding collaboration with clients and partners. This includes Polycom’s integrated voice and video solutions for Avaya and Microsoft UC environments, and Polycom VoIP phones for Microsoft Communications Server “14.”

• HP Network Equipment Technologies (NET) Services – integrates the NET VX Series UC gateway into the HP and Microsoft UC&C solution to simplify management, further streamline communications across messaging, video and voice.

“A unified, connected and collaborative environment can speed up business processes, improve customer responsiveness and simplify operations to reduce costs,” said Mark Golden, vice president, Network Services, HP. “HP helps clients assess their unique needs, optimize the solution to meet technology and business objectives, and maximize investment returns with end-to-end life cycle support.”

More information about the complete portfolio of HP Unified Communications & Collaboration Services is available at www.hp.com/services/unified

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.