Huawei, 3Com & H3C

5:50 PM -- Now that 3Com's completely taken over H3C, the company founded originally via joint venture with China's Huawei, it's tempting to lose interest, at least where storage is concerned. After all, 3Com's not a major storage contender in the U.S., and Huawei appears to have taken its storage interests elsewhere. (See Huawei-Symantec JV Rumored and 3Com Closes H3C Deal.)

But 3Com and Huawei haven't really parted ways. Changing the ownership of H3C hasn't changed some aspects of their relationship. "Huawei continues to be an important customer of H3C (actually an OEM partner) and its products," wrote a 3Com spokesman back in March.

So don't take your eye off China.

If you're tempted to, consider this: People familiar with the matter say H3C is still selling those Neocean iSCSI SANs in China, with plans to expand the line technologically and geographically.

H3C's Neocean SANs, which are based on Intransa software, hold up to 320 Tbytes of storage, and support 1-Gbit/s Ethernet connectivity, aren't planned for sale stateside at present, according to 3Com's PR. Still, a source close to the matter says Neocean's platform is going to get faster after OEM partner Intransa releases its own 10-Gbit/s platform later this year. (See 10-Gig iSCSI SANs Set for Takeoff.)What's more, it looks like FalconStor and iVivity, two of H3C's other OEMs, are also doing a brisk business in China, where their technologies are used as part of H3C WORM-based systems for online disaster recovery and SAN implementations.

All this, plus several Chinese press reports of a pending Huawei/Symantec partnership, hint at surprises to come from points east. It may take a few months, but we're more than likely to hear more interesting news from this complicated trio.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch