Is 3COM starting a price war in Switching ?
Computerworld via Individual Inc. : 3Com Corp. is slashing prices in an effort to tighten its grip on the desktop Ethernet switch market.
The company has quietly given its distribution channels permission to discount its already low-cost LinkSwitch 1000 desktop Ethernet switch by up to 40%, sources said. And the company is prepping inexpensive Ethernet switching modules for its shared-media hub.
Shared-media hubs let many users share the capacity of a regular Ethernet LAN; Ethernet switches provide dedicated bandwidth for every port.
Cant say no
``They're making Ethernet switching irresistible to users with these discounts,'' said Tam Dell'Oro, president of The Dell'Oro Group, a research and consulting firm in Menlo Park, Calif. ``This will accelerate the move from shared-media hubs to Ethernet switching.''
Users agreed.
``This effort sounds like a winner to me since we're planning to roll out some high-bandwidth applications such as multimedia to the desktop and need the capacity of switched Ethernet to do it,'' said Maralyn Rosenblatt, vice president of client services for desktop technologies at Countrywide Insurance in Simi Valley,Calif. ``A 40% discount makes it a lot easier for me to justify Ethernet switching to upper management.''
Mike Green, director of technology at Williams-Sonoma, Inc. in San Francisco, said he finds the discounts alluring. ``This would be the point where we could move from regular Ethernet in our warehouse to Ethernet switching. It makes sense since we have many clients trying to access one server.''
3Com wouldn't confirm or deny the deep discounts, which undercut rivals Cisco Systems, Inc., Cabletron Systems, Inc. and Bay Networks, Inc. (see chart).
3Com accounted for 52% of all desktop switched Ethernet ports shipped in the first quarter this year, according to The Dell'Oro Group. Cisco shipped 26% of the ports in that same period.
The 3Com move could trigger a price war, but Dell'Oro said other vendors can't manufacture in the volumes that 3Com has attained, and they don't have 3Com's broad distribution channels.
But not all users can afford to abandon their investment in shared-media hubs yet.
3Com has anticipated that; the company is quietly preparing Ethernet switching modules that can be used in the estimated 8,500 Multi-Service Hub (MSH) shared-media hubs in user networks today. They will enable the hub to support a mix of the two technologies.
The Ethernet switching modules cost less than $300 per port. The vendor previously offered an Ethernet switching module for the MSH, but it cost $1,110 to $1,665 per port. With the new modules, the MSH can be configured to support a maximum of 120 switched Ethernet ports.
3Com is also prepping two Fast Ethernet uplinks for the MSH that will let users link the hub to 100M bit/sec. backbone networks. Modules will ship Aug. 22. |
