HP has announced it will integrate the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP) across its Poly portfolio of collaboration hardware, including video conferencing systems, IP phones, room controllers, and scheduling displays.
The move represents a strategic deepening of HP’s partnership with Microsoft and signals a significant shift in how the company will develop and certify its unified communications devices moving forward.
The integration is billed by the company as a move to deliver a more consistent Microsoft Teams experience alongside enhanced security protocols and streamlined IT management capabilities.
Understanding MDEP: The Technical Foundation
MDEP, released in 2024, serves as a standardized framework that enables hardware manufacturers to build devices with deeper native integration into Microsoft services and the Teams infrastructure.
Rather than developing custom integrations for each device generation, manufacturers can leverage MDEP’s pre-built connections to Microsoft’s backend systems, authentication protocols, and management tools.
For new HP devices, this can translate into accelerated product development cycles and faster certification processes. Previously, each new Poly device required extensive individual testing and certification to ensure compatibility with Teams features and Microsoft security requirements. MDEP streamlines this by providing a consistent development environment and standardized APIs that reduce the engineering burden on hardware partners.
The platform also enables cloud-connected device experiences, where collaboration hardware can receive updates, security patches, and new feature deployments directly from Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.
What Users and IT Teams Gain From Integration
With Microsoft commanding 46% of the UC and collaboration space, it makes sense that HP would want to ensure its products are closely aligned with the company’s standards. This makes HP Poly devices an attractive AV offering for companies using Teams as their collaboration platform.
Beyond market positioning, the integration sets users up with tighter synchronization with their Teams environment. This means calendar integrations, presence indicators, and meeting controls should function more reliably across different device types.
The integration aims to eliminate common friction points in hybrid meetings, such as delays in devices recognizing scheduled meetings or inconsistencies in how controls respond across different room systems.
IT administrators stand to benefit most significantly from this shift. For IT departments managing hundreds or thousands of meeting room devices across multiple locations, this new centralized approach promises significant operational efficiencies.
From a security perspective, MDEP integration brings HP devices more fully into Microsoft’s security architecture. This means devices can receive security updates through the same channels as other Microsoft-managed endpoints. For enterprises with stringent compliance requirements or those operating in regulated industries, this unified security posture reduces the complexity of maintaining separate security protocols for collaboration hardware.
Strategic Implications and Industry Context
HP’s embrace of MDEP reflects broader consolidation trends in the UC market, where hardware vendors continue to keep pace with the main platform provider.
By aligning its Poly portfolio more closely with Microsoft’s platform approach, HP is effectively betting that customers prefer integrated ecosystems over best-of-breed component strategies. This represents a notable evolution from the traditional collaboration hardware model, where manufacturers emphasized device independence and platform agnosticism.
HP’s deeper integration with MDEP could serve as a differentiator, particularly for organizations already committed to Microsoft’s collaboration stack who value simplified management over multi-platform flexibility.
However, the success of this may likely depend on execution details that remain to be seen, such as how quickly HP can complete the technical integration.
For enterprises navigating their own collaboration infrastructure decisions, HP’s MDEP integration represents another data point in the ongoing question of whether to commit fully to single-vendor ecosystems or maintain multi-platform optionality.
