Hewlett-Packard: 8 Weapons 3Com Brings to the HP-Cisco Brawl

HP’s massive $2.7 billion pick-up of 3Com will certainly turn the heat up on the company’s growing rivalry with Cisco. Channel Insider takes a look at which new capabilities added by 3Com will best help HP go toe-to-toe with Cisco.

3Com Open Network Program

HP has made it clear that the biggest differentiator it has developed in its battle against the Cisco networking juggernaut is a product base built on an open architecture. 3Com complements this strategy with its 3Com Open Network Program, through which the company has worked to develop relationships with ISVs, service providers, system integrators, consultants and customers to improve interoperability and open development in the networking environment.

Data Center Core Switch S12500

The coup de grace of the 3Com acquisition will be the added capability of core and aggregation switching, a needed complement to flesh out HP’s offering beyond the edge into the core. At the heart of this is the young H3C switch portfolio, including the flagship H3C S1250, doubles the performance of Cisco’s Nexus 7000 and eats up half the power of this rival.

Flex Chassis SwitchS5800

Similarly, HP is paying big bucks for the top-of-rack switching capabilities offered by 3Com, as evidenced by the H3C S5800, a flex-chassis switch that can be used as a modular chassis as well as a fixed-form-factor stackable switch.

MSR Family

Though ProCurve has helped HP beat up on Cisco at the edge within the SMB, HP’s still weak when it comes to enterprise edge routing. 3Com helps remedy the situation with the MSR family of routers, many of which will help HP take on Cisco’s ISR series.

Intelligent Management Center

HP’s existing Business Technology Optimization (BTO) suite will gain added firepower with the addition of Intelligent Management Center. An enterprise-class management system that scale to handle a high-density infrastructure, IMC is built on service-oriented architecture and can help enterprise customers consolidate network management within the largest of environments.

TippingPoint

While HP certainly bolstered its security practice with the 2007 acquisition of SPI Dynamics, it was still lacking strength in the area of network security. A venerable player in the IPS/IDS field, TippingPoint offers HP options to not only sell stand alone intrusion detection, but also build it into next generation networking equipment, a strategy that 3Com was already spinning up with H3C.

3Com VoIP

While there’s certainly some overlap with HP’s Halo, 3Com’s VoIP portfolio offers a more mature technology portfolio on which the folks in Palo Alto can draw upon if they get the integration right. Overall, this will be crucial in strengthening HP’s attack on Cisco’s UCC market share.

H3C S7506E

One of the big boons of the H3C portfolio in general is its energy efficiency. The S7506E is the greenest of the bunch, according to a recent report from independent performance testing firm Miercom. Miercom found that this switch has an annual operating cost that runs 24 percent lower than industry average.

Cisco & others sued by intellectual-property company...

Network-1 Security Solutions, an acquirer and licensor of intellectual property, this week said it has initiated patent litigation against several data-network equipment manufacturers, including Cisco, Foundry Networks, Extreme Networks and 3Com.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division, for infringement of Patent No. 6,218,930, or the "Remote Power Patent." This patent, titled "Apparatus and Method for Remotely Powering Access Equipment Over a 10/100 Switched Ethernet Network," relates to several technologies used in equipment that complies with the IEEE 802.3af Power Over Ethernet (PoE) standard. The Remote Power Patent was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on April 17, 2001 and expires on March 11, 2020.

Also named as defendants in the suit are Cisco's Linksys division, Enterasys Networks, Netgear and Adtran.

Network-1 seeks monetary damages based on reasonable royalties, as well as treble damages for the defendants' "continued willful infringement" of the patent.

"We have made repeated efforts, at considerable expense, to license the Remote Power Patent on reasonable terms to companies manufacturing, selling, and using equipment taking advantage of Power-over-Ethernet technology," said Corey Horowitz, Chairman and CEO of Network-1, in a statement.

"We prefer licensing the Remote Power Patent to the PoE industry without the distraction and cost of litigation, but will take whatever action is necessary to protect our intellectual property rights and maximize shareholder value," Horowitz continued. "Unfortunately, many technology companies employ a multifaceted strategy which depends on expensive litigation, delay tactics, adverse public relations, and intense lobbying in order to avoid licensing intellectual property from small companies and inventors, leaving us with no choice but to respond with litigation."

Cisco said it has received and is studying the complaint. "In the matter of patent litigation in general, cases such as this illustrate the reasons why a broad coalition of industries are asking Congress to reform many elements of the current patent system, which has created uncertainty and undue risk for true innovators," the company said in a statement.

Large technology companies are lobbying Congress to pass a patent reform bill that makes it harder for companies with no intention of creating products to buy up patents and file multimillion-dollar infringement lawsuits against other companies 3Com, Adtran, Enterasys, Extreme and Foundry declined comment. Netgear did not respond by press time.

In August 2005, Network-1 initiated patent litigation against D-Link Systems and D-Link Corp. relating to the Remote Power Patent. After two years of litigation, Network-1 and D-Link entered into a full-term license agreement covering D-Link's sale of all its PoE products at a royalty rate of 3.25% of net sales, subject to adjustment.

In addition, in November 2005, Network-1 and PowerDsine settled all outstanding litigation and entered into a settlement agreement relating to the Remote Power Patent.