HP goes deeper into hybrid work with Poly acquisition

HP’s $3.3. billion acquisition of Poly would add to the pc maker’s product portfolio video and voice {hardware} essential to corporations transitioning to hybrid work as workers return to workplaces.

The acquisition, introduced this week, would add to HP’s product catalog the Poly video cameras, headsets and conference-room merchandise that span the house and workplace. Most of the merchandise make folks extra productive in a hybrid office, so HP predicts a growth in company spending on the gadgets.

Enrique Lores

“The rise of the hybrid workplace creates a once-in-a-generation alternative to redefine the way in which work will get finished,” HP CEO Enrique Lores stated in an announcement.

Inside workplaces, demand for convention room gear will drive a threefold enhance in international spending from $2.75 billion in 2020 to $7.71 billion in 2025, in response to analysis agency Frost & Sullivan. Firms are spending extra as a result of earlier than the pandemic, video conferencing was a nice-to-have functionality obtainable in solely 2% of small convention rooms.

“It is clear that video conferences should not going away as a result of not everybody’s going again [to the office],” TECHnalysis Analysis analyst Bob O’Donnell stated. “A whole lot of the businesses that HP goes to be speaking to wish increasingly conference-room [products].”

By buying one of many high names in house and workplace tools, HP turns into an on the spot participant out there, J Arnold & Associates analyst Jon Arnold stated. HP can pair its laptops and Poly gadgets whereas making the most of its model recognition amongst tech patrons.

“HP is already a reputation folks know and belief,” Arnold stated. The client assist that HP would offer with the Poly gear would imply fewer complications for IT workers.

HP expects substantial advantages from the acquisition. The corporate believes its scale will assist Poly lower manufacturing and overhead prices, and it might enhance gross sales by combining its PCs with Poly merchandise. HP tasks the acquisition will push Poly’s annual development to fifteen% within the three years after the deal closes.

Poly is not any stranger to market consolidation. The corporate was shaped in 2019 following the $2 billion merger of Plantronics and Polycom a yr earlier. Poly’s largest rivals are Cisco and Logitech.

HP expects the deal to shut by the top of the yr, pending approval from regulators and Poly stockholders.

Collaboration software program makers have joined {hardware} producers in focusing on the new hybrid-work market. Cisco, Microsoft and Zoom just lately bolstered their video convention companies on meeting-room gadgets. The distributors aimed many options at guaranteeing assembly fairness between in-person and distant staff.

Mike Gleason is a reporter overlaying unified communications and collaboration instruments. He beforehand lined communities within the MetroWest area of Massachusetts for the Milford Every day Information, Walpole Occasions, Sharon Advocate and Medfield Press. He has additionally labored for newspapers in central Massachusetts and southwestern Vermont and served as an area editor for Patch. He could be discovered on Twitter at @MGleason_TT.