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HP To Acquire 3com For $2.7 Billion
An anonymous reader writes "HP and 3Com Corporation today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase 3Com, a leading provider of networking switching, routing and security solutions, at a price of $7.90 per share in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion. The terms of the transaction have been approved by the HP and 3Com boards of directors."
... what happened to 3com. Some of us remember "back in the day" when 3com was one of the top brands for network cards (3c503 or 3c509 anyone?). Then their cards disappeared from the market some years ago, apparently they decided to focus on other areas. I guess it isn't a huge surprise that they would become a target for acquisition.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
As a current HP bastard (who didn't post this, BTW), this pissed me off. We've endured pay cuts, benefit cuts, no raises, mass firings, hell, my local office can't even purchase paper plates & disposable spoons, and somehow there's enough money to purchase another company.
Why is anybody surprised by this? Cisco announces a server product with very strong networking abilities. This is pretty much one of the few large areas of the datacenter (hardware wise) that Cisco hasn't moved into (besides disk arrays). HP sees this as a huge threat to them (bigger than IBM, who makes most revenue from services including running datacenters comprised of non-IBM equipment).
HP now realizing that they don't have the networking expertise to go after cisco directly in the networking space (one area they need to expand into to gain marketshare in the datacenter beyond servers and HDS rebranded storage, or that midrange Compaq based arrays). Well, they could go after the #2 enterprise networking company (Juniper, but they have a market cap of ~$13B), so they pick up 3com and whatever is left of it (remember they used to be partnered a while ago with Huauei, that partnership is gone tho), so they can better fight against Cisco for networking.
For these big companies it's all about expanding your presence and finding new revenue streams. Cisco can't seriously increase it's core routing/switching marketshare very easily any more than HP can increase its server marketshare.
It's not always easy to grow your company organically (from within). Look at cisco, they buy security companies, storage switching companies, WebEx. Hell, when they were a router only company, they bought an ethernet switching company (Crescendo) which later became the bread and butter business for them.
I've found HP's ProCurve Switches to be great with a lifetime warranty and free software updates compared to the Cisco equivilents which need SmartNet (maybe smart on Cisco's part) and cost 2-3 times as much.
However with alot of my clients rolling out the Cisco Voice solutions the idea usually is they standardize on all Cisco kit including the switches. I wonder if this is HP's play to get into the IP telephony market (which 3Com's website indicates they are in) to complete their offerings so a buisiness will go all-HP in a similar fashion?
Bob used to answer the phone when I had a problem with the 3com card in my VAX-780. Then he was riding high for a while. I'd imagine he took out lots of cash while the company was a leader.
Bruce Perens.