"Customers don't mind having multiple suppliers; they don't want to be locked into one vendor," he added.

Next week at the RSA Conference in the US, 3Com will be showcasing a chassis-based version of its TippingPoint security switch that combines traffic-inspection duties with the scale of high-end data switching, up to 10G Ethernet.

The 3Com TippingPoint M60 will let customers consolidate intrusion-prevention system (IPS) and LAN switching in a single, high-scale chassis. The M60 can be used to consolidate traffic inspection for an entire organization while maintaining security separation between groups of users.