Recovering Used Equipment, 3Com Goes Sour, Sun and Mitel Team Up

Two vendors have launched consumer-focused electronics retirement services to encourage safe disposal and provide customers with an ability to recover value from their older products. Additionally, Bain Capital Partners and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. have forfeited their attempted buyout of 3Com Corp. Lastly, Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Mitel Inc. have co-developed and will soon sell a joint solution that pairs a Sun Ray thin client with a Mitel IP phone.

Focal Points:

• Two new programs from N.E.W. Customer Service Companies, Inc. and TechForward, Inc. are offering guaranteed buyback options to electronics consumers concerned about the deteriorating value of their electronics purchases. N.E.W. Customer Service Co.'s ecoNEW program allows for customer returns at certain retail locations, evaluates the condition of old equipment, and then issues electronics retailer gift cards for the value of the returned hardware. TechForward allows customers to purchase their program at the initial purchase of the electronic component, and then return the product for an agreed upon price after a specified period of time. Both companies refurbish returned equipment and sell products at a variety of secondary online and brick-and-mortar facilities.
• Meanwhile, troubled networking firm 3Com has lost a suitor for its floundering business. Bain Capital and Huawei were working together to jointly own and rebuild the troubled business, but had to recently pull their offer due to U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States' (CFIUS) declaration of concern. The CFIUS was concerned with a Chinese-owned firm owning a significant portion of a major networking vendor, in part voicing concern regarding because of the Department of Defense's (DoD's) use of 3Com's intrusion detection products. Bain would have controlled an 83.5 percent of 3Com, with Huawei getting the remainder.
• Lastly, Sun and Mitel have collaborated on a joint solution that allows enterprise users to check into both their Sun Ray thin client workstation profiles and telephones simultaneously. The hot desking sign-in and sign-out is enabled by snapping a Java Card into the Sun Ray workstation to authenticate the session. The companies claim that the combined solution can lower power usage to approximately 9 watts, and needs only Power over Ethernet rather than dedicated power supplies. A typical PC uses approximately 80 watts of power, while a standard laptop consumes 60 watts.

Experton Group believes advances in energy savings and e-waste solutions are starting to percolate into new areas with many more innovations expected over the next 24 months. Energy efficiency and e-waste concerns have bubbled to the top of the requirements list for vendors, which will result in a stream of new concepts, products, and services aimed at conservation. Considering the extent of IT inefficiency and waste, there is tremendous room for improvement at all stages of product life cycles. Corporate executives should set targets for conservation improvements and IT executives should determine how to meet targets through improved efficiencies and waste management on an ongoing basis. 3Com stockholders want a deal with Bain and Bain may still be interested. IT executives should still consider 3Com as a risky business partner and should act accordingly.