People have been asking me for a while what the next ‘shot’ would be in the tech titan border-clash.  Cisco entered the server market with UCS, and everyone was wondering what the response would be.

I didn’t think 3Com would be taken off the market this quickly, I figured everyone would wait a year or so to see if 3Com could be successful in breaking back into the global marketplace, outside of China, with their current and new product lines.  HP, taking some risk in that department, made an aggressive move knowing that HP has the global footprint and 3com has strong roots in China that HP can leverage.  I have to say it’s an impressive bit of M&A.

But what is next?

The real question is how will others respond to this move.  What will IBM do?  What will Dell do?  I have postulated for some time that we are in a phase of consolidation where the tech-titans, in order to have competitive portfolios, will acquire or build these capabilities.

Neither IBM, nor Dell have data center networking presence, both have partnerships with Juniper and with Brocade.  A lot of people were betting on an HP-Brocade acquisition, as evidenced by the share price impact on Brocade today.  And who can count out Oracle/Sun?  They also do not have a networking footprint.

I think the major players will wait for a quarter or so, through the holiday season – evaluating their options and also seeing how HP rolls up the 3Com acquisition.  If it creates competitive advantage for HP then IBM, Dell, and Oracle will follow in HP’s footsteps.  I can’t say who will acquire who, but there is only a small universe of potential acquisition targets as well.

Does this spell the end of independent networking?