HP moves away from 3Com solution

Sometimes mergers and acquisitions result in poor outcomes for certain parties. It looks like that is the case for some VCX resellers and their VoIP customers a year after Hewlett Packard's (NYSE: HPQ) purchase of 3Com. While the 3Com VCX VoIP-brand was thought to be part of HP's long-term product lineup after the acquisition, it looks like the company has made a distinct turn away from the solution encouraging resellers to begin focusing on getting customers to upgrade to unified communications platforms from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Avaya.

The company is putting the SMB-targeted VCX system into "maintenance mode" and claims it will continue to support the product into the future. Maintenance mode appears to mean fixing problems to maintain quality, but no major upgrades are planned for the future.

Resellers have voiced anger at the decision since it means customers who just bought a VCX deployment might be left feeling that they bought a dead-end system or one that wont be supported in the future. After just putting down large sums of money on such a VoIP deployment it's hard to hear from their reseller that they should move to a new UC platform next.

For more:
- read the report

Related news:
HP offers new line of video conferencing solutions
3Com pulls buyout from federal review