3Com's Enterprise Challenge

3Com Corp. (Nasdaq: COMS), a company which is synonymous with consumer electronics, is making a serious play for the enterprise market, but just how easy will this be?

Clearly, 3Com is committed to shaking off its consumer-based image. In the last week the company finally completed its $430 million acquisition of TippingPoint Technologies Inc. and signed a major licensing deal with another security vendor, Borderware Technologies (see 3Com Closes TippingPoint Buy and 3Com, Borderware Make OEM Deal).

But Zeus Kerravala, vice president of analyst firm The Yankee Group, warns that the vendor suffers from something of an image problem. I think that they have a bit of a credibility problem in the enterprise -- they are thought of as a small business or consumer play.” Products are not the problem, but sales and marketing, he adds.

The Marlborough, Massachusetts-based firm currently has no global vice president of sales, and Kerravala says that a lot of large enterprises are unaware of what it has to offer.

Joseph Vukson, 3Com’s manager of worldwide corporate communications tells NDCF that the search is on to find a new global sales VP -- in the meantime, CEO Bruce Claflin is fulfilling the role. Vukson admitted that the company does not always get the credit it deserves in the enterprise. “There are a lot of people that still equate 3Com with the PalmPilot and those types of products,” he says.But he adds that 3Com has made a “real effort” to ramp up its enterprise products during the last two years, and points in particular to the firm’s joint venture with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (see 3Com, Huawei Form Joint Venture and 3Com & Huawei Launch Switch in US).

3Com is even touting its 8800 family of local area network (LAN) switches as a rival to Cisco Systems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: CSCO) extensive family of switch products, and signed a services deal with Siemens Business Services back in October (see 3Com Expands Service With Siemens ).

The Siemens deal gives 3Com customers and partners access to 34,000 Siemens support staff.

But Kerravala says that, like Rome, 3Com’s enterprise empire will not be built in a day. “The products are there but the credibility takes longer,” he says. “They will have to build that credibility up one customer at a time.”

Vukson promised that we will see a lot more of 3Com’s future sales and marketing efforts focused on the enterprise, although he was unwilling to go into specifics. He added that 3Com, which has traditionally been strong in the education, state, and local government sectors, will be targeting other areas. These will include federal government and “all the major verticals,” he says.Certainly, 3Com’s recent deals are shrewd moves as the company attempts to win over the enterprise. TippingPoint, for example, has earned a reputation as something of a VOIP trailblazer over recent months, and has sold a number of its Unity One devices to enterprises and service providers (see Vendor Points to VOIP Vulnerabilities).

Kerravala also believes that the Borderware deal, although aimed at small-to-medium-sized businesses, could help 3Com’s enterprise agenda. “It does wonders for Borderware,” he says “[But] in some ways Borderware could pull 3Com in too.”

With Borderware’s firewalls already deployed at 6,000 customer sites around the globe, this could present a golden opportunity for its new buddy, according to Kerravala. “For 3Com to replace Cisco they need to get a foot in the door,” he adds.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum