3Com to arrange roadshows in Baroda and Surat

3Com India has announced roadshows for channel partners in Baroda and Surat.

Vivek Gupta, Channel Development Manager, 3Com India who was very
enthusiastic about the five-city event that 3Com has started from September
said, “We have completed cities like Coimbatore, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and
Mumbai and are now looking towards cities like Baroda and Surat for roadshows to
be arranged there. The response for the event has been very good with partners
giving good responses to the programs arranged.”

3Com expects to develop its channel and channel sales by doing such programs
continuously for channel partners.

While talking about 3Com strategy, Gupta said that 3Com is concentrating on
SMB's and even large enterprises. It will also concentrate on the voice and data
networking solutions for enterprises. “The voice market in India holds great
potentials and is poised towards a growth rate of 300 percent. We expect most of
the growth from the enterprise segment,” said Gupta.

He further added that the IP telephony market is at a nascent stage and lot
of enterprises will shift towards IP telephony for additional benefits in
future. “We will be soon coming up with our open PBX system architecture for the
voice market called 'Asterisk'. It will provide all features, a user expects
from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in three protocols, and can
interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using
relatively inexpensive hardware. Asterisk provides voicemail services with
directory call conferencing and find and follow functions,” added Gupta.

H3C's acquisition by 3Com will help the company to concentrate further on the
switching and routing market. Gupta added, “We have two new products in the
networking segment in smart managed switches-2226/2250-10/100, two giga combo
ports and 2916/2924/2948-10/100/1000, four giga combo ports. The price range
starts at Rs 11,000 and will be very beneficial for a customer as these switches
can help plug-n-play for voice also and provide additional benefits.”

Vinay Dalvi