Hewlett Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) announced Monday that it has completed its acquisition of 3Com Corp. at a price of US$7.90 per share in cash, valuing the deal at approximately US$2.7 billion.
First announced in November, the deal aimed to move forward the giant IT vendor’s strategy for combining computing, storage, services and networking under one roof. It also was another contributing factor in the breakdown of HP’s long-standing partnership with Cisco Systems, a vendor with which HP is increasingly competing with in the networking space.
“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,” said Dave Donatelli, executive vice-president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, at HP, in a statement last November. “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.”
In completing the deal Monday, HP said it will integrate 3Com’s network switching, routing and security solutions with its existing HP ProCurve solutions.
“Combined with HP’s global reach, the expanded portfolio solidifies HP’s Converged Infrastructure strategy, which is built on the integration of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services,” said HP. “With this integration, customers will be able to simplify their networks, deploy an edge-to-core network fabric for the enterprise and improve IT service delivery capabilities.
HP said further details on product integration will be announced at a later date.