3Com offers 'simple' network solution

3Com has launched a range of networking products in an attempt to broaden the market for networking components by enabling all resellers to sell them. The company claims it is targeting customers that "value simplicity in networking".

3Com has launched a range of networking products in an attempt to broaden the market for networking components by enabling all resellers to sell them. The company claims it is targeting customers that "value simplicity in networking".

Karen Oddey, vice president of the enterprise systems division, said: "This is 3Com's biggest launch in the commercial and enterprise marketplace."

The company is trying to make networking an option for all resellers by introducing "a new and very powerful internet- and telephony-ready solution for the broad market". The company's Focus partner programme has 80,000 reseller partners around the world.

Andy Shepperd, networking division general manager at Computer 2000, said: "3Com's radical simplicity makes products easy to install and maintain and opens up the market to more resellers. It now allows resellers to deal simply in sophisticated equipment."

Shepperd believes there will be an increasing role for retail outlets to deal in IT equipment such as personal digital assistants, and networking is moving towards the traditional IT resellers. "We will see retail outlets dealing in more complex IT products and at the same time traditional resellers will move to more sophisticated solutions," he said.

He also felt that resellers will be playing a different role in tomorrow's market. "The integration of different types of media means resellers will become more like agents that provide service," he said, adding that the telephony sector will become the storage market of tomorrow, and that its phenomenal growth will surpass even that of storage.

The wireless firm is also working with Bluetooth technology in relation to network access.