3Com Attracting Potential Buyers

"They are spending a lot of money bringing in new engineers. We're seeing a massive, concerted effort to clean up the problems [they've seen from] outsourcing. They're bringing a lot of it back in-house," Conley said. "If they were out trying to hawk themselves, you would think they would be spending more money on marketing vs. trying to fix internal problems."

Schmidt, Conley and Steel all report that 3Com sales at their respective companies are growing.

"We're on target for a banner year with 3Com," Conley said, adding that 3Com sales are tracking for 80-percent growth compared to last year, primarily based on VoIP sales.

SOTA expects 30-percent growth in 3Com sales this year, driven by VoIP, security and core networking solutions, Schmidt said.

Valcom has built a growing, profitable 3Com practice, driven primarily by sales of 3Com switches and wireless gear to state government accounts, Steel said.

3Com itself, however, can't paint as rosy a financial picture as its partners. The Marlborough, Mass.-based company last month reported a fiscal 2007 loss of $88.6 million on revenue of $1.27 billion. While revenue is up and losses narrower compared to the previous year, the company has not reported a bottom-line profit for several years.

The company last month also said it plans to take its TippingPoint security subsidiary public by filing for an IPO later this year. That move came two-and-a-half years after 3Com shelled out roughly $430 million to acquire TippingPoint and its lineup of intrusion detection and prevention products in January, 2005. TippingPoint has largely been operating independently under the 3Com banner since then.

3Com in March paid $882 million to buy Chinese networking vendor Huawei Technologies out of their Huawei-3Com joint venture. Now 3Com owns 100 percent of China-based H3C. Silver Lake, Bain Capital and TPG Capital bid against 3Com for Huawei's share of the joint venture.