The agreement is understood to be the first of many the vendor wants with local systems integrators to sell the product line, which originated out of China.
3Com's APAC general manager Peter Chai said the company was seeking to partner with the top "two or three" systems integrators working in the Federal and State Government, education and health verticals.
It would also work in other verticals but said these would be "specific engagements brought to us by our SI partners".
Chai said 3Com's preference was generally to work with local SIs rather than the larger global brands.
"There's always two or three very strong SIs in each space that usually aren't strong across all verticals," Chai said.
"That's the model we believe can really help us deliver H3C enterprise solutions to the Australian market."
Chai said 3Com had worked with Datacom over the last three months to solidify its reseller arrangement. Other reseller announcements would follow, he said.
Chai said that the idea of launching the H3C brand in Australia was to "break the status quo" of buying enterprise-grade networking equipment in Australia. This would be done not just on price but also on elements like customer service, he said.
"We want to break the mindset that you have to compromise quality, integrity and performance of products because you paid less for them," Chai said.
"We're saying to customers that you can do much better on equipment purchases without paying through your nose."
Issue: 276 | February, 2010