Re: OT: 3Com to be sold to HP for $2.7b

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Nathan Richie <nathanr_at_boice.net> wrote:
> Interestingly enough, one of my clients just had a meeting with HP about a week ago. The HP rep was trying to push them towards the Procurve. My client said he was told:
>
> 1) That HP is now #2 in the switching market

True. Very far from Cisco, though.

> 2) That there are no support cost ever for the Procurves (I assume he is only referring to the access layer switches)

That depends on what you call support. HP support will check you've
powered up the switch, yes... then send you a piece of hardware even
if it works well, because they can't do much more.
In reality, if you need real support (not just hardware replacement),
you must pay for it.

> 2) That they have a lifetime replacement program. If the switch ever goes bad, that HP will replace it for free. If the switch is EOL, they will replace it for free with a suitable current model.

Wrong! "Lifetime" means until 5 years after End of Sale. See for
instance the table in page 3 of this document, End of Service Life:
<http://www.procurve.com/docs/eos/announcement/2600_Series_End_of_Sale_Announcement_Feb_09_NA_eng.pdf>
End of Service Life : The day all Service Obligations will end : 5
years after the respective End of Sale Date

But even if it were true, consider how many failures are due to
hardware instead of software failure or human error (poor design/bad
installation/operation). I'll guess less than 5%. And since there's no
real Cisco TAC equivalent, you're left in the cold...

> My client said they were "considering" using them in their access closets. I told him that I understood that he had to make a business decision on this but then I decided to provide him some food for thought.
>
> 1) Is that a sustainable business model? HP would only makes a profit on the initial sale of the switch, so anytime that they have to provide technical support or replace the switch, they are going to be losing money. What happens when they are no longer able to fund this replacement program?

It probably is sustainable, but only because their technical support
is very limited as explained above.

-Thomas

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Received on Thu Nov 12 2009 - 22:52:36 ART