Declaring that it intends to bring “disruptive change” to the networking industry, Hewlett-Packard Co. said it has agreed to acquire 3Com Corp., a supplier of networking equipment and security products, for $2.7 billion in cash.
HP said the combination of 3Com’s routing and switching, network management, and security products with HP’s ProCurve family of network offerings will enable HP to offer a complete set of technologies that span “from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.” The resulting product portfolio, HP claimed, will enable it to change the competitive landscape in networking, now dominated by Cisco Systems.
“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor,” said Dave Donatelli, HP executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, in a statement, without mentioning Cisco by name. “By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry.” That strategy encompasses what HP describes as the “convergence” in corporate data centers of servers, storage systems, networking equipment, IT management, facilities, and services.
Formed in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, 3Com has three products lines: the H3C enterprise offering; the TippingPoint security line; and 3Com networking products for mid-market and smaller companies.