HP to acquire 3Com for $2.7 billion

Hewlett-Packard will acquire networking vendor 3Com in a deal valued at $2.7 billion, the companies announced Wednesday.

The agreement, already approved by the HP and 3Com boards of directors, calls for HP to pay $7.90 per share in cash for 3Com.

HP said the deal illustrates the company's data center strategy, which is focused on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services.

"By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry," said Dave Donatelli, general manager of Enterprise Servers and Networking at HP.

(More to come.)