Just over a year ago, Hewlett-Packard Co and 3Com Corp got together to work on distributed computing products (CI No 1,122) but now the relationship is running out of steam. At the time Hewlett-Packard even bought a 5% stake in 3Com to cement the relationship and the two companies envisaged a glorious future together in which they would co-operate to combine 3Com’s 3+Open LAN Manager operating system with the HP LAN Manager/X version for Unix; develop Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol; design network management under the HP OpenView architecture; and generally collaborate on electronic mail and Hewlett’s NewWave environment. In fact one year on, interoperability has been achieved between 3+Open and LAN Manager/X, and both companies have completed TCP/IP development for OS/2 LAN Manager and LAN Manager/X. However, according to Computer Systems News, the two sides are now winding down their collaborative developmental activities and a significant number of projects have not got off the drawing board. For example, 3Com never did develop applications for Hewlett-Packard’s NewWave office automation environment, nor did it port Hewlett-Packard’s Open View management platform to OS/2. Neither company is prepared to put a figure on the amount of revenue the alliance has generated, but they are not ready to call the whole arrangement off yet. The companies are still committed to developing a gateway product to interconnect their X400 mail systems. In the meantime 3Com, which saw interim profits fall 58% to $6.5m (CI No 1,334), is more concerned with its profitability problems than holding Hewlett’s hand.
