3Com’s design centre comes to India

BADLY hit by cumulative losses, 3Com Corporation, one of the leading players in enterprise networking, is looking to India now. In a recent public announcement, 3Com unveiled plans to open a design centre in Hyderabad this month. The centre will support its US-based research and development to accelerate the delivery of 3Com’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networking solutions. Tasked with supporting ongoing VoIP programmes at 3Com’s facilities in Rolling Meadows, Marlborough and Andover, the centre will be overseen by 3Com’s senior engineering managers based in India. It will focus on VoIP software features and application development. 3Com’s US-based engineering teams lead VoIP architecture evolution and product platform direction. With this development, 3Com has expanded its engineering operations overseas. The company, which has been reeling under financial pressure for some years, has cut its American workforce while building up its non-US design expertise. Last year it set up a design centre in Taiwan. In April 2003 it struck an alliance with Chinese telecom equipment vendor Huawei, which 3Com said would provide it with modular layer 2 and 3 10/100/1000 MB switches.