Peter Chai, vice president and general manager, 3Com Asia-Pacific
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| Technology companies focused heavily on the Western markets now have plenty to worry about. | ||
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Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
3Com's biggest technology threat--as well as opportunity--would be the commoditization of network equipment. That's why we have put in place an open services networking (OSN) strategy to create an open source-based network platform for all services that both 3Com and third-party software developers can ride on. So rather than avoid commoditization, 3Com encourages it and works towards an infrastructure that will become a flexible platform for delivering business applications and services.
How do you expect the recession will affect 3Com?
The scale, speed and intensity of the global economic downturn have caught businesses by surprise. Some analysts have forecast tech spending in the United States and Europe to decline, while expecting Asia to buck the trend with modest growth.
Technology companies focused heavily on the Western markets now have plenty to worry about. It has suddenly become urgent for them to ramp up their sales in the Asia and other emerging markets. 3Com is fortunate that it has a head start in this area--more than half of 3Com's revenue currently comes from established operations in China and the Asia-Pacific region.
We also believe the financial crisis will also usher in an era of prudent tech spending, where more businesses will start to look for alternatives that offer the best value performance in terms of technological innovation, business relevance and reliability.
What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
We are eagerly anticipating the start of broad-based adoption of the 802.11n protocol to deploy new wireless applications.
With mobile devices becoming more pervasive and finding application across verticals, mobile technologies that enable high user volumes, high bandwidth voice services, seamless roaming and adaptive mesh creation, as well as industry-specific services like asset tracking, will become important for businesses and consumers.
We expect uptake to be especially fast in verticals like logistics, manufacturing and retail, which can immediately leverage advanced 802.11n wireless connectivity to provide high performance and reliable wireless control and tracking solutions.
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