3Com is investing $160m (£102m) as well as assets and IP licences into a joint venture with Chinese networking vendor Hauwei.

The move sees the networking giant embracing the enterprise market once more, after conceding the sector to Cisco in early 2000.

Hauwei will contribute its enterprise networking business resources such as local area network switches, routers, licences, engineering capabilities, sales and marketing resources as well as personnel.

3Com will sell the jointly developed products under its own brand throughout the world, apart from in China and Japan where they will be sold under the Hauwei-3Com brand.

"This allows us to develop far broader enterprise solutions than we have been able to in the past," Buddie Ceronie (pictured), regional director at 3com, told vnunet.com. "Cisco will be the main competitor of this joint venture."

3Com was heavily criticised in early 2000 when it pulled out of this market after failing to break Cisco's dominance.

But the vendor's renewed enterprise focus became apparent when it sold off the assets of its CommWorks network service provider division to UTStarcom for $100m last week.

In the meantime, Hauwei faces a legal battle with Cisco after the networking giant accused it of copying sections of its source code and technical documentation.

The vendor will file its official response to the allegations on Monday, according to UK sales and marketing director John Finney.