Under the changes announced today, 3Com will split its local operation into two teams. One will look after 3Com's traditional small to medium enterprise market while the other team will target Australia's large companies and government departments. The current country manager, Mike Clarke, will leave the company to "pursue new career goals".
The company's international business development manager for wide area network products, Andy Gijsbrechts told journalists 3Com plans to launch products designed to break Cisco's stranglehold on the Australian enterprise market.
By shipping enterprise class routers that won't require software or memory upgrades, Gijsbrechts claims the company's products will have a much lower total cost of ownership. "Our competitor does exactly the opposite," he said.
3Com's South Asia president, Stanimira Koleva, said the company is approaching large system integrators and outsourcers in a bid to drum up business at the top end of town -- they're hurting, she said, and 3Com views outsourcer market wobbles as an opportunity. "Most of these guys are facing financial pressure... we're seeing the system integration partners facing decreased margins on the hardware."
"We can provide a better cost... [and] a way for them to differentiate," she added.
As for the litigation between 3Com's routing technology partner Huawei and Cisco -- the routing and switching giant accusing Huawei of cutting and pasting Cisco operating system code into its own routers -- Koleva says 3Com has done its due diligence. As a patent holder, she said, 3Com is always keen to ensure it isn't infringing anyone's intellectual property.
The company announced it will be introducing several new enterprise class router products into the local market within the next few weeks.
