HP Moves to Acquire 3Com Network Expertise

With today’s agreement to purchase networking switching, routing and security systems provider 3Com for about $2.7 billion, enterprise technology behemoth HP is trying to take enterprise networking to the next level.

HP says it is developing a next-generation data strategy built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services. Assuming the purchase passes regulatory review, the addition of 3Com’s technology portfolio will make this strategy much easier to execute.

According to HP, the addition of 3Com solutions will enable HP customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center. All hyperbole aside, HP may well be right. This type of “edge-to-core” network architecture is exactly what business technology customers have been searching for.

In the 1990s, enterprise networking was largely built on the “best of breed” architecture model where companies would plug disparate pieces from numerous vendors into the network and then go about integrating everything so it all worked in harmony. The 1990s also brought us grunge music. Best-of-breed did not fare much better than grunge. Integration was complex, time-consuming and all those parts from different vendors didn’t want to play nice together, even when they were developed on the same platform. Thanks to a huge string of buyouts, as evidenced by the HP-3Com purchase, there are far fewer breeds to choose the best from today than there were even a few years ago.

But regardless of how a company designed its architecture, integration with third-party switching and routing solutions was still necessary. If HP can pull this purchase off and genuinely absorb 3Com’s technology into its midst, it will be able to offer customers a network infrastructure that can be easily implemented and managed from the outermost point to the data center.

Although Cisco holds the advantage of its massive existing install base that would have to be ripped out for HP’s new model to gain serious traction, HP will still pose the first serious threat to its dominance Cisco has faced in at least 15 years. It is also worth noting that 3Com’s H3C brand of networking technology, developed in partnership with Huawei Technologies, is the market leader in everyone’s favorite emerging market, China, and HP will also inherit a well-established Chinese R&D team and a low cost manufactuing model with this acquisition. Big-name acquisitions like this often don’t live up to the hype, but the hype surrounding this one actually has a chance of panning out.