(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Technology company Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com) has completed its nearly $3 billion acquisition of 3Com (www.3com.com), expanding its Ethernet switching offerings, adding routing solutions and significantly strengthening the company’s position in China.
At a price of $7.90 per share in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion, the Monday acquisition closed, helping HP deliver one of the broadest network technology capabilities in the market. The acquisition of 3Com also brings to HP network security capabilities through its TippingPoint portfolio.
“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor,” HP enterprise servers and networking executive vice president and general manager Dave Donatelli stated in November when the acquisition was first announced. “By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. 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 center.”
HP plans to integrate 3Com’s network switching, routing and security solutions with its existing HP ProCurve (www.procurve.com) solutions, creating a comprehensive portfolio for customers. Combined with HP’s global reach, the expanded portfolio solidifies HP’s Converged Infrastructure strategy, built on the integration of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services. This integration enables customers to simplify their networks, deploy an edge-to-core network fabric for the enterprise, and improve IT service delivery capabilities.
As PC World noted when the acquisition was first announced, HP and Cisco have “traditionally enjoyed a symbiotic, but separate success,” however the acquisition of 3Com marks the point at which HP will be full-on competing with Cisco in the data center routing and networking equipment space, where Cisco had previously largely operated unchallenged.
The approval of this major international deal was a challenge according to some sources because the companies had to vie for regulator approval, which could have made for a thorny path, with the Chinese antitrust approval being the final hurdle.
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