HP offers new line of video conferencing solutions

Depending on where you stand, the video conferencing market is either flourishing or overcrowded with a laundry list of vendors, including Cisco, Avaya, Polycom, Lifesize, Google, Skype, Apple all touting their respective offerings. But now they'll have a new competitor in HP, which just introduced its new Visual Collaboration offering.

HP's Visual Collaboration fires on all cylinders offering a solution for all the various use-cases the telepresence world has come up with. The suite includes desktop apps, a tablet device (HP Touchsmart with Visual Collaboration Desktop pre-installed), a portable conferencing room system and big three screen immersive studio-room solution. Visual Collaboration servers are software-based allowing companies to offer the solution on hardware or in hosted form. The whole offering is SIP compatible allowing companies to use it as a bridge from their legacy systems.

HP has unified communications (UC) system deals with Microsoft, Avaya and Alcatel-Lucent. The company's purchase of 3Com gave it VoIP and past rhetoric made it a little antagonistic to Cisco, often offering HP services up as a way to have a Cisco-free business.

HP plans to continue selling its older Halo system as well.

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