Thoughts on the Future of Collaboration with Greg Baribault, VP of Product & Portfolio Management, HP

In this episode, we’re joined by Greg Baribault, who leads the HP business and brings a 26-year legacy from Microsoft, offering unique insights into the evolution and future of collaborative technology.

• Greg reflects on his transition from Microsoft, where he worked across Exchange Server, Skype for Business, and Microsoft Teams, to leading hardware innovation at HP.
• He discusses the evolution of Skype Room Systems to Microsoft Teams Rooms and the importance of seamless, instant meeting starts.
• Greg shares how HP is integrating technologies from Polycom, Plantronics, HP, and now Vyoppta to create a cohesive, user-friendly experience in both physical and virtual meeting spaces.

Thanks to Landis, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support and for helping to make content like this possible

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Greg Baribault: You get these insights now across the workplace, you can really start to help customers decide where to spend their dollars. I'd love to put a room kit in every room, but if there's a room that you know is, is underutilized, you know it's used for an hour or two a day, that's probably not the place you're gonna go spend your dollars first versus the room that's maybe older or struggling, or the audio's not as good or.

It's big and used all the time, but doesn't have native equipment at all. Let's give people those insights and let 'em know where to optimize their spend.

Tom Arbuthnot: Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast This week we have a very well known face in our space. It is Greg Baribault who leads the HP Poly business. He's about a year into that role. But previous to that, he was 26 years at Microsoft, uh, ranging through Exchange server, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams.

So a lot of people in our community will know him from that role as well. Greg takes the time to take us through that journey, through Microsoft and some of the experiences there, and also gives us a view on what's going on with HP Poly. What some of the component parts and strategy there is and also what he's learned moving from inside Microsoft to into the partner space as well.

I. Many thanks to Greg for taking the time to jump on the pod. Really interesting conversation. And also many thanks to Landis who are the sponsor of this pod. They provide an excellent teams at Attendant console and Contact Center, so thanks to them for their support on with the show. Hey everybody.

Welcome back to the podcast. Uh, this is a podcast I've been trying to line up for quite a while. I've been, uh, chasing Greg, uh, probably for at least, uh, six months now. Um, but he's just been getting his feet under the table, uh, poly as we'll. Talk about, uh, hey Greg. Welcome to the show. Hey. Thanks Tom.

Really 

Greg Baribault: good to see you again. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. So, uh, appreciate you taking the time and I think most people in our space will definitely know your name, uh, from your time on Skype business and Teams. Um, but for maybe the one listener who, who doesn't know you, uh, maybe you just give us a, a brief intro to maybe current role, what you're doing now, and then let's step back through the Microsoft journey.

Greg Baribault: Yeah, working backwards. Yeah, it makes sense. Um, so I'm, I'm Greg Baribault. So I, um, I have the incredible honor to lead the, uh, HP poly uh, business right now. Um, so as I think most people will probably know, uh, it's been a little bit of time, um, HP acquired Poly, which was itself, the entity combined by both Polycom and Plantronics.

Um, so it brought together, uh, this robust set of headsets and phones and video room systems and just all, uh, audio video expertise. Um, into HP and, uh, it was just about a year ago. Um, I, I took on the, the responsibility to lead the product group, uh, for poly, uh, for those, for that product line. Um, but prior to that, I had spent, uh, about 26 years at Microsoft and, um, all of it in some form or another in, in the collaboration space.

Uh, getting people to work well together and, uh, find ways to collaborate and break through different boundaries. Um, it started way, kind of way back in the day on exchange server, um, building, you know, those little, they were called DVDs, uh, that you would pop into a machine and load software and actual software 

Tom Arbuthnot: on actual servers with actual, on actual servers and 

Greg Baribault: running your actual data centers and.

Uh, yeah, it was, it was quite some time ago. Um, so working on exchange server, um, building, actually voicemail, uh, at the time voicemail interfaces into exchange to store your voice data, uh, on into, into your inbox, unified inbox, which was pretty wild at the time. That, that was 

Tom Arbuthnot: my first. Uh, introduction into the, the Microsoft world.

So I was working at Cisco partner, um, doing call manager, and, uh, lots of exchange, um, started coming up, replacing what was Unity at the time and you could plug Unity into exchange as well. So that was the, the very first time for me of working in the, the Microsoft side of the world. 

Greg Baribault: Awesome. Yeah, it was, it was quite a dynamic time.

Uh, lots of discovery. Um. I, I spent quite a few years on exchange. Did a few other things within Microsoft around, mostly around communication. Um, went back to exchange right at the time we were transitioning, uh, into what was called the BPAs or, uh, uh, the online service, uh, instance of exchange, uh, that eventually became Office 365.

Um, and so really kind of went through that transformation. Uh, with the team, uh, leading the calendar effort, uh, uh, at the time, uh, and mobility. Um, and that just sort of grew into more, uh, realtime focus. So moved into Link, which turned into Skype for Business, which turned into teams, um, and ended up running, uh, the teams, rooms business, uh, and actually creating what is now, uh, one of my best partnerships at Poly, uh, with Microsoft.

Of course. Putting these great systems, native room systems into conference rooms around the world, um, and enabling people to work from anywhere. So it's kind of been my, my passion and my interest for many, many years. Um, and so now I get to do the hardware instead of just the software. And it's, uh. It's been quite a journey.

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. Talk us through that room journey. 'cause it really is amazing from the early SRS, the Skype room systems to now, uh, well over a million units in mm-hmm. In customers with the current teams room systems. Take us back to that kind of early days journey. 

Greg Baribault: Yeah. That, you know, those was a pretty fascinating time of understanding what the key priorities were.

Um, and at the time. And it's, it's still somewhat there, but the big focus was around instant meeting start and removing that pain, the friction. Um, at Microsoft at the time, I wanna say we had between seven and 10 minutes on average at the start of every time block of people just struggling to get the room going.

Um. And, you know, we were measuring that to try to measure how successful the link room system and, and, and then Skype room system would be. And you know, that that definition of a one touch join experience where the thing was actually syncing with the native calendar and showed your meeting and, and gave you that call to action as soon as you walked in the room to get things just started instantly.

I think it was pretty transformational. And. Like with any good product you have, you know, you define a narrow set of success criteria. And for us it was that instant meeting start. Like, I wanna start a meeting in under 10 seconds. Um, and one touch join was, was pretty, uh, I think transformational. Yeah. For meeting rooms.

So letting people truly focus on the task at hand. Uh, what is my meeting about? What objectives do we have for the discussion? Not how do I solve the technology in the, in the room. Um, so that was, that was really, uh, a big challenge and, you know, we wanted a consistent experience in every room you went into.

Tom Arbuthnot: Um, I think that that was really big as well. The, the, like the ui ux matching, the desktop experience and the room experience. So you're not coming into something completely foreign when you're coming into a room. 

Greg Baribault: Right. Yeah. It was so important and, you know, people don't want to spend their time figuring out deciphering new experiences that there was so much muscle memory.

In the, the kind of iconic round icons of Skype for Business, you know, with the little red circle on the right that meant end your meeting. It was important to carry that red circle end meeting button onto the console in the room because that way there was intuition. Everyone knew exactly what to do and they didn't have to go and rediscover.

So meeting layouts and making that very familiar, um, how to share content, making that the same icon and the same sort of experience you'd have on your desktop. It really was about taking the things that people adapt to and learn, uh, and, and ultimately love every day on their desktop, and making that familiar when they're in a shared setting with the device that's there in the room.

I think that's really what drove the success. You know, that does the nugget, right? That's the core of what drove success of Skype room systems at the time. Um, and that, that, of course evolved directly into teams new look and feel new, um. Uh, same affinity between desktop and room, but it just, it was a different experience there.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. It feels like it, it kind of accelerated that journey in the sense of. When it was Skype, the dominant play was on-prem. So it was like a system that you patched with cu, like very traditional. And it feels like as we've, as everything has gone on this cloud journey, the room has followed in terms of, particularly recently with the kind of V two architecture and how it update, you can flag things on and off in the cloud.

Greg Baribault: That's right. So for me now, the, the journey is very similar. So, you know, the past. Priority was about creating every room to look very similar and not have to learn new things. And that at, from the Microsoft point of view, meant working across a variety of OEMs device makers to make sure that there was a common experience that was shared between them.

My role now is actually quite similar, um, but I would define it as, um, for every room that's a poly room, um, I wanna make sure that experience is consistent and predictable and, and very usable. Um, so now our effort is about building this robust platform where, um, we have a device literally for every space, um, smallest focus room, super wide field of view can put, uh, like a a v 12 or X 32 camera into a four person space.

But then highly modularized spaces so that on the same technology manage the same way, same user experience. You can run a boardroom or an extra large room or a multipurpose room. Um, with all modular equipment 

Tom Arbuthnot: and you've got a lot, a lot of pieces of the, of the kind of puzzle here with the, the poly technology, the poly room systems, audio, video, technology, obviously pretty awesome.

The Plantronics on the headset side. Mm-hmm. And obviously hp, you had some stuff in play as well, so I guess it's part of what you are doing now is bringing that kind of. Three is, is three parties fair? Or maybe two parties, but bringing all that, those worlds together. 

Greg Baribault: Yeah, a hundred percent. So, uh, again, it, it, everything we do, we sort of think of it in two, two different frames for the end user.

What is the employee experience? When you think about a common experience that transcends the device form factor? Even when I leave the room, what common pieces do I see with me at my hot desk or at home or in my headset? And then through the other frame is for the IT pro or the manager or buyer, what insights can I get?

How do I manage and get a sense of the health of the team, the security of the organization, um, through my management portals that also now can look across the entire device estate, my rooms, my headsets, my docs, my PCs, um, and HP really is becoming, is the only player really. That can give you that full 360 view of every device in the estate.

Now, 

Tom Arbuthnot: well, talking, talking of that, I'd love to get your, your, uh, your thoughts on the Vyopta acquisition 'cause that Oh yeah. That's a tool that, um, I've, I've had customers really love, particularly enterprise customers in terms of visibility. That feels like a really interesting new puzzle piece to, to bring to the, the table.

Greg Baribault: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, certainly a, an exciting acquisition. Um, you know, customers are in many different stages of their journey towards native rooms. Um, there's some kinda legacy equipment that they're migrating from. Um, there's rooms that are not equipped well at all, um, or maybe equipped with a more BYOD environment.

And the, the beautiful thing about Vyopta is we get that left to right view of every space and get these insights from every space. And it isn't and very intentionally is not. A poly only experience, right? So this will give, um, our IT managers this view of every room and get rich insights from every room no matter what happens to be in there.

Um, but then we can go richer, of course, with, uh, diving into the management capabilities that we have with Poly. Um, so now if I see something that's not behaving quite right or a room that's being used in a way that maybe I didn't anticipate it being used, um, I can change configuration, uh, through my poly devices.

Um, we can even give some smart recommendations of, you know, this is a room that's heavily used, the voice score, maybe using our, we have some new voice score, AI technology that's monitoring the voice activity in the room. And, you know, maybe you need a, another extension microphone or rethink the way these, these are laid out on the table, given where people tend to sit.

Um. So even if it's not that the room is broken, you know there's some problem with it. It's just not being used the way it was. Yep. Expected. We can get those insights now everywhere and then give you really smart recommendations on how to go adapt your poly equipment to make it richer and better. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I think there's good fundamentals there as well.

Like they, they're, you know, forever when I was more hands-on, on consulting, we were chasing through people not using certified headsets or not using headsets at all. We, it still doesn't feel like we've cracked that natively in terms of being able to do that. And that, that's an area that Vyopta has, has traditionally given some quite good insights into.

So I, I like the idea of. The visibility you can get as an admin of like, there's, there's opportunities to improve the experience for users here, be it. Yeah, for sure. They're using the wrong kit or no kit. 

Greg Baribault: Yep, yep. And there's still so many of those out there. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Although the Codex and the software has got a lot better to hide it.

But you're still. Starting from a bad place and like, like doing the best you can, it's, it's such a shame when the technology's so good. Not to, I guess, I guess I have a bias here being in this world, but like not to spend the money on a, at least some decent equipment for those end users who are using this stuff very heavily.

Greg Baribault: Yep. Yeah, exactly. 

Tom Arbuthnot: How, how much do you think the, that tooling story is becoming a, a, an important thing for, for customers? It feels like, you know, there's a lot of OEMs in play in the Microsoft space. Obviously you've gone from serving all the OEMs to now working at one and focusing on one, but like, it feels like tooling and management, it becomes an important conversation in kind of differentiating who you choose to work with.

Greg Baribault: It is, well, I mean, there's so many dimensions to that. Tooling and management. From the perspective of just keeping everything healthy, keeping the devices secure up to date with the latest firmware and software, the right policies apply. Just knowing like, you know, things break even if not through software or bugs or issues.

These are dynamic spaces with people coming in and out all day, bumping things, kicking things. You know, a, a cable is gonna get disconnected at some point and you need to be aware of that. So there's, you know, the tactical, how do we. Leverage tools to manage and monitor spaces to keep 'em healthy and functional.

But we've been working towards this, this sort of higher level of enlightenment, um, for rooms in the estate. You know, you go beyond the, the basics of keeping things healthy to, um, are people getting what they need out of them? Are they being, are they having impact in these spaces, um, to an even further level of looking in aggregate across the space.

Um, and right now, this is a very dynamic time of. People returning to the workplace versus working remotely. And when and how do they return? Um, during what days of the week are they working with coworkers? Um, and it's hard to measure if is that successful? Are we having impact by bringing people back? Um, and are people getting what they need now?

Are we utilizing our space well. Right. So now you're kind of moving to another level of, of enlightenment and bringing sensors together with AV equipment, with occupancy knowledge and scheduling knowledge. And you, you fuse all that together and you start to really get a sense of, is my physical space being maximized, uh, and really leveraged to its fullest potential?

Um, those insights I think are just incredibly valuable and it starts to change the storytelling from. Our devices aren't just about the employee experience anymore. It isn't only about the layouts that we see on the room and trying to, for, for us as people selling product, articulate that just through the lens of the end user.

Now there's a return on that investment for the real estate manager, for the IT pro, for the. The ciso, the, the security teams, you know, you start to really expand the audience of people that gain value from this. Uh, and I think it makes the, the story much easier. Uh, and it kind of sell, it starts to sell itself.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I, I feel like, uh, I've been, I've had a few podcasts where we've talked to customers about doing, uh, greenfield offices and rethinking spaces, and it feels like certainly, maybe, maybe in the last 24 months, maybe even shorter than that, that we are finally having these builds consider. It and experience from day one rather than the architect builds something nice and now the AV team have got set budget to whack something in afterwards.

Greg Baribault: Yep, yep. Exactly. Uh, yeah, the budget questions, that's a great, a great, uh, thing to focus on too, right? The budgets are, are unknown and you get these insights now across the workplace, you can really start to help customers decide where to spend their dollars. You know, there's no point in putting, I'd love to put a room kit in every room, but if there's a room that you know is, is underutilized, you know, it's used for an hour or two a day, that's probably not the place you're gonna go spend your dollars first versus the room that's maybe older or struggling, or the audio's not as good, or it's big and used all the time, but doesn't have native equipment at all.

Um, let's give people those insights and let 'em know where to optimize their spend. Uh, it's really an important point. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, there's something, there's traditionally so little actual visibility into that. Yeah. Like it's, it, it's surprising or it's not if you're in the space, but like, uh, the IT team have very little knowledge.

The facilities might have some from badging or room booking, but it's certainly picking out if I, if I can only do 50 rooms, which 50 would I do is actually a harder question than you'd think it would be. 

Greg Baribault: Yeah. Yep, that's totally true. It's, uh, it's been a very hard problem forever. I mean, since the beginning of, of tech in conference rooms really.

Um, but our goal, of course, poly is, uh, is to make these very approachable and affordable and, um, hopefully put native kit into every room. I. Nice. Every room deserves it. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Well, Greg, I'm interested, what's your, like coming from being in Microsoft? Obviously you worked with lots of the partners during that journey, but coming from inside to outside and working with Microsoft as a partner, are there any things you, any perspectives of change, anything is different for you now?

What is that? What's that feel like? It's a year in now, so you've had enough time to, uh, to feel the outside world a bit more. 

Greg Baribault: Yeah. Uh. It's more different than I thought in some ways. Um, less different in, in a lot of my customer interactions. You know, the, the problems are the problem space is very common.

Um, more different in some important ways, though. Uh, I definitely developed an empathy that I did not have, uh, as a software partner, uh, towards some very complicated device making challenges. Um. The, the global distribution of, of hardware and managing of SKUs and, uh, that the SKU management problem might be the biggest aha moment that I had where, uh, you know, my expectation on the software side was, you know, it's, it's not that hard.

It's another row in a spreadsheet somewhere. Um, but, uh, but no, that, that's really a hard problem and I have a whole new respect for it now. Um, so that's one. Um, the ability to fix things. Uh, you know, in the software world, you're pretty blessed with great engineers that you can just say, Hey, you know, there's a bug.

They spend a couple hours, they fix a bug, they push it, and it's live around the world. And, and, you know, by the end of the day, um, where in the hardware world, it's not quite that easy. Uh, so there were, there's some challenges there that I, I learned the hard way. Um. Yeah. But, uh, but actually there's some interesting cross learnings and I think bringing my software background into the, the HP role here, uh, has been quite interesting.

And, and I, I think, I hope helped the team think about things a little bit differently and a, a software mindset, uh, that allows us to be a little more agile, move things more quickly. And, um, I think that it's important. I mean, people should challenge themselves in careers to go and, and try some new things and leverage a skill.

Uh, in maybe a different environment, um, and see what they can bring and, and create value there. Yeah. Super 

Tom Arbuthnot: interesting. I appreciate you sharing that. It kind of anecdotally makes sense that if, if you're a software company, everything is software and you think in that mindset, and then, so actually some of this stuff is, uh, like, you know, being manufactured months in advance and, and we have to make decisions on chip sets and decision on connectors and yeah.

Greg Baribault: And Unring bells is hard to do with these things, so Yeah. Yeah, it was a new empathy. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And what's your, what's your take on this, this space at the moment, in 2025? What are the. What are the challenges? What are the hot topics like? What, how do you see this year rolling out from kind of a, I know you're actually, you're doing more than just rooms, aren't you?

You're doing headsets, you're doing, uh, some of the HP profiles. What, what's your thoughts on the space? 

Greg Baribault: Um, every year has, has been pretty dynamic since, you know, the, the kind of end of covid, if you will. Um, and I think a couple of things that'll be good trends for us this year. Um, one, I, I think this is the year where.

We're gonna see more investment in physical space. The questions of return to office have settled down or slowing down. Um, people are ready to, to turn the crank. It's also the right number of years following what was a global refresh of like. You could sort of say anyone that needed a headset bought one in 2020.

Yeah. Um, and 2021. Right. The huge spike in peripherals mice and keyboards and setting up a home work environment and buying headsets and they have a life cycle. So those lasted a little while. We're now coming back to where these are, are coming due again. Um, you know the devices, you know, age and. So I think there'll be a, a kind of another surge that's gonna begin.

And it's thankfully not all happening at once because nobody wants a every Yeah, you could, you could 

Tom Arbuthnot: hardly get hold of a headset that time round. Unfortunately, 

Greg Baribault: it'll spread out now, which is all, all very good. Yeah. Um, but I think we're gonna start to see some real material growth, uh, over the next year, year, two years, three years for us uniquely, um, for Poly.

2024 was a huge year for us for portfolio investment. So we refreshed the entire video line in 2024. So right now we have the only device maker, in fact, with a Gen two product across both platforms, windows and Android, and in every single room, small, medium, large, and in our modular technology. So a huge year.

Uh, lots of growth. Uh, lots of new of refreshes last year. So we've got, we're in this great position. To leverage Gen two product, um, across the entire range going into a year where we expect, uh, you know, growth to accelerate. So I think we're super well positioned from a, you know, video room headsets. Um, we have some news coming soon, uh, on a headset refresh that's gonna be that okay ing that's really terrific, um, that, uh, we'll, we'll be excited to share soon.

Um, so again, kinda lines up perfectly though with this, this wave. So for us, I'm thrilled. I think we're, we're set up really well for success and, and at a good time too for the completion of the integration with hp. So now is when we'll start to see the integration with management tools really start to take off.

Um, the Vyopta coming in, of course, right now. So timing is, uh, is really kind of perfect. It's the perfect storm of the convergence of product, refresh, customer, uh, lifecycle refresh, and um, this sort of better together. Enhancement across our portfolio. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to jump on the pod and give us your perspective.

Of course, it's nice to hear the, uh, yeah, the, the, the, the history of inside of Microsoft and, and now what you're seeing on, on the other side, but excited for the, the future of h HP Poly. And, uh, yeah, hopefully we'll, uh, get you on the show again in the future and we can talk about those, uh, new, new headsets and, uh, what's going on.

I'm, I'm gonna be keeping close eye on the Vyopta stuff because I feel like that's a really interesting opportunity. 

Greg Baribault: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Cool. Thanks Craig. Awesome. 

Greg Baribault: Thank you, Tom.