The deal, announced after the close of markets today, gives HP a $1.3 billion company that has a storied legacy -- 3Com was co-founded by Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet.

The Marlborough, Mass.-based 3Com has 9,200 employees.

In announcing this deal, HP officials cited 3Com's newly developed architecture, its "converged infrastructure" intended to integrated, standardize and virtualize as much as the data center as possible, including servers, storage and I/0 as possible.

HP's acquisition may also sharpen the fight with Cisco Systems Inc., for data center customers. Cisco has been moving in the server space, and recently signed a deal with EMC to collaborate and customer offerings.

"By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry," said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP, in a statement. "By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com's extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center."