At the InfoComm show mid-June, TANDBERG announced that it had strengthened its relationship with HP. I was curious and asked for a more detailed briefing. I had a video conference with Hellene Garcia in Marketing and Steve Vobbe, the VP of Alliances for TANDBERG earlier this month.
HP has been promoting its offering as a completely managed service solution, called the HVEN – Halo Video Exchange Network – since December 2005 but they realized early on, that they couldn't deliver all the session interconnectivity that users need. So, naturally, they checked out for possible partners and reached an agreement with TANDBERG. Announced in January 2007, HP and TANDBERG signed a joint sales agreement and a technology agreement to develop interoperable solutions. This agreement preceded TANDBERG's announcement of Experia telepresence system (by about three weeks).
Eight months later, in August 2007, the companies announced the availability of the interoperability solution enabling HALO users to conduct sessions with TANDBERG users. The HP Halo Gateway solution consists of a TANDBERG 6000 MXP codec, a TANDBERG Video Switch, a Halo compositor, an HP ProLiant server and HP-designed software.
Both companies have extended the alliance to enable the joint development of 'next generation' telepresence technologies. HP will invest in Experia managed services capacity and plans to align HVEN pricing and services to suit endpoints and user needs.
TANDBERG agrees to develop additional telepresence endpoint configurations.
Both companies commit to building up an ecosystem to promote standards to drive multivendor, inter-company telepresence services. [I wonder if this is about IPV-Gateways?]
