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After Arista, HP to challenge Cisco
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 15 December 2009, 18:25 IST
Bangalore: After Arista, it is HP which plans to challenge Cisco, as it moves to increase investments in its networking business. The plan comes as companies resume technology spending next year, said Marius Haas who has been overseeing the unit since June 2008, to Bloomberg.
"We're going to be a key player in the market and we're going to make the investments in order to be successful and really compete aggressively," Haas, 42, said in an interview to MercuryNews.com. The company last month announced plans to buy networking company 3Com for $2.7 billion.
HP, meanwhile is also planning to hire more sales employees and has set quotas of networking equipment that they need to sell. The PC maker is fighting Cisco, which dominates the market for networking gear such as routers and switches.
According to market research firm Gartner, Cisco controlled about 76 percent of the market for local-area network switches in the first half of 2009, compared with 12 percent for HP and 3Com combined. When Haas took over the HP network unit a year ago, it was a challenge to him to get the business noticed - even within HP, reports MercuryNews.com.
"It was a business unit that was interesting, but not one that we'd call out with red neon lights," Haas said. "I needed to get the CEO on board, I needed to get our board of directors on board and basically everyone else."
