Microsoft, HP in $300m services deal

Microsoft and HP plan to spend $300m over the next three years in an expanded effort to jointly sell technology to large businesses.

A new deal announced on Wednesday calls for, among other things, more HP workers to be trained to sell Microsoft products. HP and Microsoft are longtime partners in a wide range of consumer and business areas. The $300m figure covers product development, testing, validation, deployment and joint sales and marketing costs, the companies said.

Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, said in a statement: "Through our collaboration with HP, our more than 20,000 joint customers will have access to an expanded set of solutions and services to tackle their most pressing business problems." Among the areas Microsoft and HP plan to focus on are unified communications and messaging, content management, business intelligence and business process integration.

HP executive vice president Ann Livermore said in an interview: "A lot of Microsoft's new product announcements play into these areas. Part of it is new technology from Microsoft, and part of it is just what's hot from our customers."

Microsoft, for example, has announced a big push into the world of telephony and unified messaging, with the company this week saying it has the first test version of its call-handling software.

Turner said that closer cooperation between HP and Microsoft will have multiple benefits for businesses. "When our stuff works better together, it saves customers money," he said. However, he said that is a "secondary benefit", with the main advantage being the "transformational opportunities" for businesses to reshape themselves.