This week, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) company, is holding its Atmosphere user event. After being virtual-only for the past two years, the conference has an in-person component due to the pandemic. For Aruba customers, Atmosphere has always been an important event because it’s the place to learn about the innovation the vendor is bringing to the network, particularly in Wi-Fi, where Aruba has been a technology leader since its days as an independent company.
In a surprise move, Hewlett Packard announced a definitive agreement to acquire Poly, a vendor of workplace collaboration solutions for $3.3B in cash, which is inclusive of about $1.6B in debt.
This marks the end of an era for Poly, formerly Polycom, which was one of the pioneers of videoconferencing. The current Poly company is a combination Polycom business and Plantronics, which acquired the video vendor in 2018. Later that year, Logitech attempted to purchase Poly, but the deal fell apart at the 11th hour.
After two years, the Enterprise Connect show returned to an in-person format in Orlando, Florida. Enterprise Connect is typically a show that communications vendors use to announce new products and features – and Amazon Web Services (AWS) did just that.
Enterprise Connect is back! One of the highlights I always look forward to are the keynotes, particularly Cisco’s as the speakers generally —but not always — deliver a good mix of vision and product. This year, Collaboration and Contact Center General Manager, Javed Khan, took the stage with appearances by SVP and GM Snorre Kjesbu and VP and GM of Cisco Calling, Lorrissa Horton, to discuss the upcoming wave of hybrid work, the problems companies might face, and how Webex has been evolved to meet those challenges.
Communications and the cloud have seemingly become synonymous. The pandemic-induced trend toward working from home prompted companies to adopt “as a service,” or UCaaS, solutions for collaboration.
This created a massive wave of deployments, and some industry observers began to believe that the on-premises opportunity, which includes private cloud, will no longer be viable.