New Kid On The Street

H3C, the former Huawei-3Com joint venture, now wholly owned by 3Com, is trying to grow its presence in the US market. In its simplest form, their strategy is: 1) Use merchant silicon (instead of custom chips); 2) Build on Open Standards; 3) Make use of its China based development and production capabilities and build on its relationship with Huawei; 4) Come to market with a broad enterprise portfolio ranging across switches, routers, wireless and security appliances; and 5) Cover the enterprise market with a direct sales force. While Cisco is constantly under attack in specific networking segments (HP and Brocade for example) it will be interesting to see if the time is right for a company with joint North American and China heritage to take on the networking giant in its own backyard - the US business networking market.