IBM Corp and 3Com Corp are trading technology and extending their existing working relationship to speed up and deliver backbone and workgroup networking efforts. The companies will exchange technology for the development of future high-end backbone switches using IBM’s Prizma Asynchronous Transfer Mode chip sets and 3Com’s Ethernet-to-ATM ZipChip asynchronous transfer mode switching technologies. The technology will be used to deploy high-bandwidth applications such as videoconferencing, electronic commerce and medical imaging. IBM began working with ChipCom Corp, before it was acquired by 3Com, back in 1995 (CI No 2,773). More recently the two have been working on switching technology. Under the terms of the latest agreement, 3Com plans to re-market IBM’s Multiprotocol Switched Services to add greater functionality to its existing ATM Local Area Network Emulation services. IBM will offer customers a version of 3Com’s SuperStack II 1000 and 3000 workgroup switches and will integrate 3Com’s Fast Ethernet and future Gigabit Ethernet technology into the IBM 8260 and Super 8260 campus backbone switches. It also plans to provide ATM uplinks for certain models of future IBM and 3Com switches.
