HP To Acquire 3com For $2.7 Billion 231
An anonymous reader writes "HP and 3Com Corporation today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase 3Com, a leading provider of networking switching, routing and security solutions, at a price of $7.90 per share in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion. The terms of the transaction have been approved by the HP and 3Com boards of directors."
I was recently wondering... (Score:5, Interesting)
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3C905B-TX
Possibly the most compatible card I have ever used. (Every OS except >= Vista supports it). Now they're super cheap on the electronic bay.
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No Vista driver because the card doesn't support the HD DRM requirement for the ability check that you haven't physically modified the card in the last 1/30th of a second...
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PCI appeared, and with that the 3c905 and 3c900. Their primary distinguishing feature was that the actual chip used on the card changed every few months requiring a new driver without a change in product number. Then the DEC 21xxx (tulip) series appeared and 3com became just a bad memory.
Re:I was recently wondering... (Score:4, Funny)
PCI appeared, and with that the 3c905 and 3c900. Their primary distinguishing feature was that the actual chip used on the card changed every few months requiring a new driver without a change in product number.
Don Becker came one time to do a demo at work. He brought a stack of CDs to clusterify a bunch of PCs (I don't remember exactly what he was trying to accomplish, to be honest. It's long enough ago that it's fuzzy)
Anyhow, when his CDs booted, they didn't recognize the revision of the 905's in the machines. I always got a kick out of seeing Becker himself get bitten by that. Made me feel a little better about running into problems myself.
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See, i remember the 3c509's well - that's all they would support at my university (no generic isa NE2000 cards allowed in 1996...)
$ORKPLACE (a university) mandated the 3c509 because we apparantly had lots of problems getting Banyan Vines to work properly through generic NE2000 clones. When PCI came along we moved to the 905. Then we went Netware, and the on-board Intel and Tulip chips got really good, and separate NICs became an un-needed extra cost for most applications here - I could easily believe the same thing happened elsewhere, too. A couple of years ago I fished about 20 new-in-box 3c509b's from a skip; don't know what I'll us
Re:I was recently wondering... (Score:4, Funny)
Now, that's a name I've not heard in a long time... A long time.
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You realize that Banyan was "collaborating" with MS on AD correct?
So much of AD is direct from Banyan... still.
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Completely OT (Score:2)
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At the telemarketing company I worked at in 1995, the Tandem mainframe interfaced with the rest of the world through interface computers called MLADs (Multilan Attachment Devices). The MLAD required a 3c503 coax interface card configured to a particular IO address & IRQ for the Tandem side interface an a 3c509 TPE interface card on another particular IO address & IRQ. It wouldn't work with any other card.
There were 4 racks of those machines. All transporting NetBIOS over IPX between the Tandem an
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*breaks down sobbing*
I need a hug!
Re:I was recently wondering... (Score:5, Funny)
*breaks down sobbing*
I need a hug!
PTSD or nostalgia?
Re:I was recently wondering... (Score:4, Insightful)
In the world of computers it's usually a bit of both.
Re:I was recently wondering... (Score:4, Funny)
Stockholm ptsd--when you can't distinguish it from nostalgia.
I ceased wondering... (Score:2)
I ceased wondering how Cisco ate 3Com's lunch when I had to integrate a couple 3Com switches the company CEO (an avid "bargain hunter") acquired into company LAN. To put it mildly, for manufacturing something that refused to play nice with other networking gears my only question is how they managed to stay in business this long.
They started buying companies (Score:5, Informative)
Started with them in Massachusetts in '93. They had some of the worst and most disorganized upper management ever. The guys doing corporate strategy must have been ADHD. They would buy a new (usually startup) company every year...some good, some bad. Kept the original management for a year, then, after all the developers and original management had gotten PO'd and left, bought another company and did the same thing. Year after year. I'm not sure what they got out of it.
I was laid off after they'd spent several years developing a gigabit enterprise switch, sold the first few, then made s surprise announcement that they were leaving the enterprise business. You can imagine how their major customers, who'd started to build new infrastructure using these switches, took that news.
They did give out great clothing, though. Still have a collection. Great co-workers, good projects, extremely poor corporate management.
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... what happened to 3com. Some of us remember "back in the day" when 3com was one of the top brands for network cards (3c503 or 3c509 anyone?). Then their cards disappeared from the market some years ago, apparently they decided to focus on other areas. I guess it isn't a huge surprise that they would become a target for acquisition.
That's ancient history. My most recent memory of 3com is a 3C16470 switch that needed to be power cycled on a weekly basis.
Remember Bob Metcalfe (Score:5, Interesting)
Bob used to answer the phone when I had a problem with the 3com card in my VAX-780. Then he was riding high for a while. I'd imagine he took out lots of cash while the company was a leader.
Re:I was recently wondering... (Score:4, Informative)
Oddly I'll always remember 3com for having bought up US Robotics.
Does that make me old? :(
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No, those pants do not make you look old.
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Does that make me old? :(
I still have my original USR HST. Back in '89 they were running a beta program for selected BBSs to test out their brand-spankin'-new 14.4k technology. If memory serves, they only worked at 14.4 when connecting to other HSTs. Now those were fuckin' L33T!
Once those came out most of the decent pirate hubs went 9600+ only. Ahh... the slow-ol-days.
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As somebody who was forced to use dial-up at home until 2005 (no broadband was available), I can attest that US Robotics modems were the best after the buyout as well. Connections virtually never dropped, they worked in every OS I threw at them, and they always made the best of the fact that the phone line wouldn't accommodate better than 28.8... Now that I think about it, the two I owned were outstanding, but I still don't miss them even a little.
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Re:I was recently wondering... (Score:4, Informative)
I remember when everyone knew who Hayes was, and nobody knew who USR was. USR was the underdog in that battle, and eventually switched roles from the David to the Goliath. But anyway 3COM was hardly a no-name company when they bought USR; Bob Metcalf invented Ethernet and founded 3COM and at the time was the God Of All Things to network geeks. He put ethernet adapters into VAX machines that had previously been stand alone systems in Universities, connected them all up, and made the Internet go. By the time of the buyout, 3COM was riding high on the sales of NICs and USR was the king of dial-up. It was a match made in heaven. Until both markets collapsed, for different reasons. I miss those days.
Awkward (Score:4, Informative)
Somebody talked. The options market started heating up hours before the announcement.
It looks like it's going to be a good fight, as the traditional tech companies merge transformer-style into a pair of consolidated all-in-one providers. Maybe they'll battle to the death for every server room dollar.
All the while Apple sews up more and more lines in the consumer electronics market and Jobs smiles subtly. It's almost as if he knows what happens once we've consolidated everything in the datacenter.
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All the while Apple sews up more and more lines in the consumer electronics market and Jobs smiles subtly. It's almost as if he knows what happens once we've consolidated everything in the datacenter.
Apple does nothing in the datacenter or networking and these companies do little in consumer electronics. I doubt the merger will mean much to Apple.
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Yeah, I'm not impressed with 2 billion billable downloads either....
I don't want to be rude, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote.
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Well, yes, Apple is a consumer in the datacenter market. So is WalMart. So is Burger King.
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Only an Apple fanboy... (Score:2)
... would find a way to relate this not in any way to Apple.
Apple simply does not figure in most of the markets where HP moves, while in the other hand HP could encroach into Apple's markets (they compete against each other in all of Apple's computer lines).
"Apple sews up lines in the consumer markets" (Score:2)
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And they're selling more of them than ever.
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The iPhone is the number one smartphone in the market by the metric that matters most to Apple: net profit.
And they sell overpriced x86 boxes to a niche market segment.
That would be the "profitable" niche - and they appear to have taken over the "profitable" corner of every game board they play on.
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Back in the Dot.Com era, there were plenty of companies out there that were all hype with little to show for it. I would continuously ask myself "Why does this crap sell?". Then the crash came, the companies that were nothing but hype were the first against the wall, they went away, the world went back to normal, and I said "Oh, now I understand!"
Now, while Apple continues to
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I suspect your ability to understand will depend on your willingness to re-examine your axioms.
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Not this time. Not with 30 billion cash in the bank.
FU HP (Score:5, Interesting)
As a current HP bastard (who didn't post this, BTW), this pissed me off. We've endured pay cuts, benefit cuts, no raises, mass firings, hell, my local office can't even purchase paper plates & disposable spoons, and somehow there's enough money to purchase another company.
Re:FU HP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FU HP (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:FU HP (Score:5, Insightful)
'So, why was it we busted our collective asses this year? Someone?'
Because you are young, foolish, and naive and believe that hard work and diligence means something to a corporation. :)
But don't worry; you will grow out of it
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IT company I work for implemented 5% pay cuts across the board this year, and then went out and made a ~$2B acquisition
:)
Re:FU HP (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FU HP (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who is going through HP's Work Force Reduction, it was a shock to me too. I'll just bet my 88K salary put them over the edge for this buy. - HEX
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It's highly unlikely that HP will make money on that one. 3com doesn't have anything which HP doesn't have a better version of already. This makes even less sense than the Compaq deal.
Re:FU HP (Score:4, Informative)
It's highly unlikely that HP will make money on that one. 3com doesn't have anything which HP doesn't have a better version of already. This makes even less sense than the Compaq deal
Patents.
Re:FU HP (Score:4, Informative)
Shit like this is why I left 5 years ago. Get out while you still can, the old HP is dead and the zombie remnant doesn't give a shit about its employees.
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"Get out while you still can, the old High-Tech Industry is dead and the zombie remnant doesn't give a shit about its employees."
There, fixed that for you.
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Its funny. I know some body who was in middle management in HP in the 1990s. The was sick of the weekly meetings half way across the world and was praying for the money to run out.
I guess it did.
the suspense is over... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the suspense is over... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll give you a hint. The company is referred to with a two letter acronym that starts with an "H". They've spun off all but one of their best divisions over the last decade, and they're about to fold their printer division (The last that makes anything innovative or of any quality) into the division that makes their worst-in-class PCs. They also just bought 3Com.
they can HAVE it... (Score:2)
No, Compaq bought 3Com (Score:5, Insightful)
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Next on her agenda: governor California.
Oh well, if she splits California in two it might not be a bad thing. Unless one of them winds up like Agilent.
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Next on her agenda: governor California.
She as on TV the other night here and I had the distinct impression her aim was about one step above that position.
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Actually, she is running for the U. S. Senate against Barbara Boxer.
Maybe I'll send Senator Boxer a campaign contribution with a note:
"I was laid off by Carly."
You know, you can give money to campaigns out of state. So there are
a good 15,000 potential donors right there.
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With Carly as governor I predict she will manage the outsourcing of California state government to India.
'Government 411 operator': Thank you for calling HP, i mean the State of California. May I have your serial number?
Caller: Hello, I'm calling from Malibu. We need to call a State of Emergency. The water main broke and there's major flooding.
Operator: There is flooding in Mumbai?
Caller: No Malibu.
2 hours later.
Caller: No Malibu. M-a-l-i-b-u.
Operator: Sorry. I cannot help you without a serial number.
Caller
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This is basically restoring one of the many useful bits of Agilent that were available in house before her masterful smashup job.
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Joy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Joy (Score:5, Funny)
The ether cartridge that comes with the NIC is just a starter, it'll run out within a few hundred thousand packets(less if the packets contain more than ~50% 1s). Of course, only genuine HP ether is supported, for best possible data fidelity
Re:Joy (Score:5, Funny)
Kids, this is what happens when sniffing ether.
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Unless you receive government tokens; but then that is a completely different communication protocol.
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Yer token something.
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Also needing the better part of an hour to install the gorram driver.
HP's more expensive business-type printers have decent drivers that only need 10MB or less disk space, and don't have bloated installers, but you'd never know it from the consumer shit.
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Just for kicks, if you don't need any of the fancy features, you can still use the old laserjet 4 drivers for brand new HP laserjet printers. Every large enterprise I've been in has standardized on them, they must be doing something right. Their consumer grade hardware is total shit though, a customer of ours decided to "save" some money by buying some printers from Best buy instead of the printers we recommended. They bought 2 HP printers, the drivers took 45 minutes to install out of the box.
After the
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Does that mean, you are already planning to buy their products when they arrive at that state? ^^
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Borg (Score:2)
Another one bites the dust. (Score:2, Insightful)
What happens when there are no companies left to merge? You get China.
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What happens when there are no companies left to merge? You get China.
Actually, you get South Korea. Google 'Chaebol'.
Maybe HP is for real... (Score:5, Funny)
Adding 3com networking know-how to HP computing products may actually produce better products?
Hey it could happen!
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Made me laugh... (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's the thing... The company I work for has a few sister companies in HK and China. I work for the U.S. office.
We recently (last year) upgraded our switches in the U.S. office. Previously, we were running 3Com switches of various types and models (3300's mostly of different kinds, and some 4200's). The decision to replace them was due to the fact they were getting old and the performance wasn't really there when you start daisy chaining 10 different switches to support over 200 ports.
When looking for ne
That name is getting clunky fast. (Score:3, Funny)
3ComHPaq?
Combating Cisco's Server Push (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is anybody surprised by this? Cisco announces a server product with very strong networking abilities. This is pretty much one of the few large areas of the datacenter (hardware wise) that Cisco hasn't moved into (besides disk arrays). HP sees this as a huge threat to them (bigger than IBM, who makes most revenue from services including running datacenters comprised of non-IBM equipment).
HP now realizing that they don't have the networking expertise to go after cisco directly in the networking space (one area they need to expand into to gain marketshare in the datacenter beyond servers and HDS rebranded storage, or that midrange Compaq based arrays). Well, they could go after the #2 enterprise networking company (Juniper, but they have a market cap of ~$13B), so they pick up 3com and whatever is left of it (remember they used to be partnered a while ago with Huauei, that partnership is gone tho), so they can better fight against Cisco for networking.
For these big companies it's all about expanding your presence and finding new revenue streams. Cisco can't seriously increase it's core routing/switching marketshare very easily any more than HP can increase its server marketshare.
It's not always easy to grow your company organically (from within). Look at cisco, they buy security companies, storage switching companies, WebEx. Hell, when they were a router only company, they bought an ethernet switching company (Crescendo) which later became the bread and butter business for them.
Did they do this for the VoIP? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've found HP's ProCurve Switches to be great with a lifetime warranty and free software updates compared to the Cisco equivilents which need SmartNet (maybe smart on Cisco's part) and cost 2-3 times as much.
However with alot of my clients rolling out the Cisco Voice solutions the idea usually is they standardize on all Cisco kit including the switches. I wonder if this is HP's play to get into the IP telephony market (which 3Com's website indicates they are in) to complete their offerings so a buisiness will go all-HP in a similar fashion?
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That was what I was thinking; HP doesn't have a strong VoIP brand, and vendors will often push proprietary network solutions with their VoIP installations. 3com sure as hell does it, as does Cisco. Maybe that's what HP is eyeballing.
COMS is available (Score:2)
I guess this purchase will free-up 3Com's stock symbol COMS (a pretty cool one).
Possible insider trading (Score:2)
Re:Valuation (Score:4, Interesting)
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They have a ton of IP, such as the patent for connecting VOIP calls to a regular PSTN [google.com], and didn't they just start flexing on their ethernet patents earlier this week? They had previously settled with Realtek for something like 70M + licensing and pretty much every other chip out there uses buffering. Obviously 70M is chump change to HP but I could see them getting 2B worth out of the rest of the 3com IP at least.
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3Co
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HP's switches are practically free compared to Cisco's pricing (forgetting the rape that is smartnet) for functionally equivalent hardware. Throw in free firmware updates and a lifetime warranty, it's a great deal. Here's to hoping they leverage some of that IP and come up with competitive big-iron stuff that compares to the likes of the Nexus or 6500.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
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My first thought, without RTFA, was:
Cisco: Look our routers can run Linux and look at these x86 modules, we're getting into the server market.
HP: Well screw you, we'll go and buy some networking market share.
No idea how accurate that is, but it felt right.
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God forbid a government actually trying to stop Monopolies and reduction in market fairness. How would that make sense? Lets live in the country with no basic health care for all its people, that is a great way to live.