3Com "Switched On" in China

You don’t have to look very hard to find glimpses of former glory in the ancient city of Hangzhou. It’s in the gold and bronze pagodas or the ornate architecture of the emperor’s temple positioned along the banks of the West Lake, magnificent and imposing.

As you approach, you realise the years have taken their toll on the façade and what was once the symbol of a powerful empire is littered with tourists trying to imagine what it must have been like when the region was in its heyday. This city with a glorious past and a somewhat unimpressive present next to thriving cities such as Beijing and Shanghai was a surprisingly appropriate setting for the 3Com partner conference.

3Com was once a powerful player in the telecommunications and networking market, altering the IT landscape in the 1970s with the creation of Ethernet. Then a few wrong moves along with an unforgiving and fast-paced IT market left the vendor broken and desperate to regain its status as a global leader. Some analysts identify 3Com’s failure to build an enterprise LAN equipment business as the main reason for its downfall – and the key to Cisco Systems’ success.

This sobering realisation that the company plummeted from such a coveted position as a result of poor decision-making is perhaps the driving force behind the current 3Com business strategy.

There was certainly plenty of enthusiasm and morale building as Bob Dechant, general manager of Data and Voice Business Unit and senior vice president, 3Com Corporation, kicked things off with a keynote that had all the elements of a presidential campaign speech.

Promises of a return to former glory and an optimistic outlook for the future of 3Com formed the foundation of his message to partners who had endured highs and lows over the years and had become understandably wary of corporate assurances.

“I think that we are at a point in our company’s evolution to accelerate our business model to success, which makes our partnership more powerful,” said Dechant. “Today in the China market over the past three years we went from negligible market share to greater than 30 percent market share. I don’t know any other player in this market who can take on the 800-pound gorilla and beat it.”

3Com’s greatest asset, according to Dechant, is its research and development portfolio. The vendor has R&D facilities at its headquarters in Marlborough, Massachusetts, Beijing, India and, of course, Hangzhou. The recent acquisition of H3C, supplier of IP-based products and solutions based in China, is one of several initiatives aimed at revitalising 3Com’s market presence, particularly in APAC.

If the mood of the attending partners is a reflection of how the acquisition will be received globally, 3Com has succeeded in injecting energy into its cause and reengaging channel partners by allying itself with a technology innovator that has a strong presence in Asia.

“Our competition likes to talk about 3Com as a struggling entity and I’d like to challenge that,” said Dechant. “Over four consecutive quarters this business has generated operating profit – I don’t believe this is the 3Com Cisco wants you to know.”

The word “win” featured heavily in Dechant’s keynote. Much like Rocky Balboa’s triumphant return following a solstice, he envisions a glorious comeback for 3Com.

Recently launching a service and support model dubbed Project Daylight in Sydney and other key cities including Hangzhou, Dechant explained that 3Com is making a conscious effort to establish a presence in the APAC and admitted that the previous support base in Toronto wasn’t effective in servicing this region.

“This is a complex world where our customers are putting in solutions that span many vendors, many environments and a lot of power sources in this ecosystem of a solution,” said Dechant. “We’ve completely overhauled our services model and we’ve moved to a hybrid model – some in-source and some outsource – to deliver on our customer experience as we never have before.”

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