HP targets data centres with $US2.7b cash offer for 3Com

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 12 November 2009 03:57

IT Industry - Deals

HP is to purchase switch and router maker, 3Com, for $US2.7 billion in cash, a move that it says will "transform the networking industry" and "underscore its next-generation data centre strategy centre strategy built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services."

The deal follows the failure last year of Bain Capital Partners $US2.22 billion offer for 3Com announced in September 2007. That deal would have seen Chinese telco vendor Huawei -3 Com's former joint venture partner in H3C - take an unspecified minority stake. The US Government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) blocked the deal in February 2008. No reason was given.

The goal of HP's move on 3Com appear remarkably similar to those espoused earlier this year by dominant router and switch maker, Cisco  and by its smaller rival, Juniper Networks, both of which have unveiled their visions for the future data centre where processing and storage are virtualised, the network hierarchy flattened and where servers, virtualisation software, storage, networking and security are tightly integrated.

Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP, said: "By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com's extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data centre."

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