3Com: Onus Is On Us To Regain Partner Confidence

3Com's major flaw, Gulling said, is that it tends to think it's a larger vendor than it actually is, trying to compete head-to-head with market leader Cisco Systems Inc. when there's little chance for victory. "They act like they're the Goldman Sachs on the LAN and voice side," he said. As 3Com's market share continues to erode in some key areas, Gulling said it's time for 3Com to undergo a "philosophical change."

Like Kobuszewski, Gulling said 3Com lacks a solid chain of communication to partners.

"I really hope 3Com changes their mindset on how they engage their partners and make them an extension of the selling force," Gulling said. "I would like to see top-tier executives talking to us directly more."

If that mindset doesn't shift, Gulling said he has backup plans in place. Verteks is a registered Cisco partner, so Cisco solutions could be offered in a pinch. Plus, he said, competing vendors are "beating the door down" to partner up, including Juniper Networks and others.

Gulling said he's already partnered up with ShoreTel on the VoIP side, due to slipping 3Com voice sales, a move he said he's extremely pleased with. While his switching and wireless sales of 3Com continue to grow, he said a decline in VoIP concerns him most, especially since 2004 and 2005 saw a boom in sales for 3Com's NBX platform. But when 3Com rolled out the VCX platform, thought by many to be a replacement of the popular NBX, things started to go sour, especially as it appeared the NBX platform had become neglected and started to suffer.

"All of the NBX partners were very, very upset," he said. The VCX was scaled back, but reintroduced again a few years later to the same results. The VCX is more expensive than the NBX, but is lacking some of the features of the older platform. Either way, Gulling said his staff is getting trained now on the VCX, despite his misgivings.

"I'm not 100 percent confident the VCX is there yet and it's harder to sell than the NBX at this point because it lacks some of the core features," he said.

Despite the uncertainty, 3Com VARs say they're going to forge on in hopes that the vendor turns things around.

"We're in this together," Gulling said. "I can't win deals without them and they can't win deals without us."

Dechant agreed, adding that he's uncertain when 3Com's and its partners' journey into new territory will reach its desired destination. Dechant said 3Com, which earned $1.3 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2007, is poised for continued growth despite Bain backing out of the merger transaction.

"We're not a crippled company whose only hope for success was being taken private by a company like Bain," he said.

Much like Schmidt said SOTA Technologies will continue with "business as usual," Gulling said he'll do the same, but keep a watchful eye on 3Com and continue his attempts to get at least one high-level executive on the phone to talk turkey.

"I can't think of a reason I would fire them right now unless the ship goes down," Gulling said. "I'm with them until the end. At the same time, if something happens that's damaging to us that will hurt us, that might be when we say 'forget it.'"

Jennifer Hagendorf Follett contributed to this article