3Com to arrange road shows in Baroda and Surat

Vinay Dalvi

Mumbai:  3Com India has announced road shows for channel partners in
Baroda and Surat. According to

Vivek Gupta, Channel Development Manager, 3Com India, "We have completed
cities like Coimbatore, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai and are now looking
towards cities like Baroda and Surat.These road shows are part of the five city
event which began in September. So far the response for the event has been very
good from partners."

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
SMBs 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 these switches can help plug-n-play for voice also and
provide additional benefits."