The radical refocusing of 3Com`s business will not leave South African users of its high-end and analogue products in the lurch, Buddie Ceronie, country manager for the US networking company told ITWeb today.
On Tuesday, in the US, 3Com announced its plans to refocus the group towards the mid-range of the connectivity market with an emphasis on the small and medium enterprise sector. This means that companies such as Cisco, Nortel, Extreme and Foundry will be left to battle it out for the high-speed switching segment.
According to a 3Com statement released this week, the company will now focus on consumers, commercial customers and network service providers. Product focus will emphasise broadband cable and asymmetric digital subscriber linked modems, LAN telephony products, voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and home networking products.
VOIP may take a little longer to implement in SA, due to state-owned Telkom`s monopoly over voice communications.
"What 3Com is doing is essentially focusing on the most profitable parts of its business and selling off the high-end switches and the US Robotics analogue modem business. We shall keep all that is in between allowing the company to become highly focused," Ceronie said.
Ceronie admitted that 3Com had been criticised in the past for being too diverse.
"People asked us a number of times how we could be so diverse. 3Com was in the Palm business and across the networking spectrum. Now the focus is coming through," he said.
As part of the refocus, 3Com will steer its high-end LAN switching customers to California-based Extreme Networks and will sell its analogue desktop and PC card modem business to a new company it is forming with Accton and NaSteel Electronics.
Shipping of the CoreBuilder, ATM LAN switches, PathBuilder and NetBuilder WAN switches and routers will cease on 30 June. However, Ceronie said that customer service contracts would continue to be honoured for the remainder of the agreements.
"These businesses are no longer strategic to 3Com`s future and the decision to transition out of them is an integral part of our strategy to sharpen our focus on new opportunities presented by emerging high-growth technologies..." the 3Com statement said.
3Com`s Palm unit had its initial public offering on 2 March with a sale of 4% of the company. Maiden annual results are expected to be released around March 27.
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