Steel Hector & Davis Drives Fast-Growing Legal Practice With Scalable Networks Based On 3Com Layer 3 Switches.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 7, 1999--

Eminent Miami-Based Law Firm Supports International Expansion

with Advanced Applications Running on High-Speed

3Com(R) CoreBuilder(R) and SuperStack(R) II Switches

and Fast EtherLink(R) Network Interface Cards

3Com Corporation (Nasdaq:COMS) today announced that Steel Hector & Davis LLP, one of Florida's oldest and most prestigious law firms, is standardizing local area networks (LANs) at its three U.S. locations on 3Com CoreBuilder 3500 Layer 3 switches. The Fast Ethernet LANs support more than 420 users in the firm's Miami headquarters and offices in West Palm Beach and Tallahassee. The company also plans to install 3Com Ethernet networks at six international sites, boosting the total network to more than 500 users. For Steel Hector & Davis attorneys, their investment in 3Com networks is an important competitive edge, providing ready access to key legal documents and faster, more efficient client service.

Founded in 1925, Steel Hector & Davis' law practice extends to general and commercial litigation, corporate and securities law, and mergers and acquisitions. Its international practice has become an important contributor to the firm's growth. In the last year, the firm has doubled its international staff and opened offices in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. With nine offices and over 160 attorneys, Steel Hector & Davis is using the 3Com LANs to keep pace with its expansion.

Deployed in the fall of 1998, the new network is already having an impact on the law firm. Attorneys and paralegals now access larger volumes of information more quickly with the new high-bandwidth connections. Steel Hector & Davis' clients also save on their legal bills because the many searches for documents and legal briefs can be done in minutes rather than hours. The firm's intranet, already buzzing with daily bulletins and links, has recently added InterAction, a contact manager application for law firms by Interface Software. InterAction tracks client contacts and shares information among legal-team members.

The network additionally is expediting the firm's use of CSS accounting software, which provides general ledger and billing functions. It also is accelerating the company's use of Novell GroupWise email, an increasingly business-critical application as the firm's electronic communications increase in the wake of its growth.

"3Com's network architecture is helping us to run the bandwidth-intensive applications we need to sustain the quality of our research and client service and to support our growth," said Kevin Rorabaugh, information-systems director for Steel Hector & Davis. "Because it is scalable, it will support Steel Hector & Davis in the future when we move to Layer 3 switching or if we choose to upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet."

Rorabaugh further estimated the new 3Com network is at least 10 times fast than its predecessor. "We were a one-way highway," he said. "Now it looks like we've got 40 lanes, and our users are accessing all the data they need with no downtime or delay."

Keeping Up With Technology's Leading Edge

Steel Hector & Davis' new networks are rooted in an aggressive approach to technology designed to optimize its client services. For the last two years, the firm has been steadily migrating its 16-bit applications to 32-bit versions. The first of these applications was GroupWise, the company's most critical and widely used online service. In 1997, the firm rolled out litigation support software it had designed in-house. The software was a boon to the attorneys' trial preparation and litigation efforts, but played havoc with network traffic. Backbone degradation soon began to interfere with attorneys' productivity.

Given this saturation and its plans to implement NetRight Technologies' iManage Network -- searchable document-management software that holds a raft of legal files and materials -- Steel, Hector & Davis began to search for a faster and more resilient network architecture than the shared Ethernet/FDDI infrastructure it had used since 1992.

The firm approached 3Com and Cabletron for a scalable Fast Ethernet infrastructure capable of satisfying its short-term needs and long-term growth. The company chose 3Com based on the CoreBuilder 3500 switches and 3Com's superior technical support. "The CoreBuilder 3500 switches provide the speed and scalability our business requires as we continue to grow," said Rorabaugh. "Their Layer 3 switching capability is especially important if we need to create virtual LANs or decide to implement videoconferencing and other multimedia applications. In addition, 3Com showed real dedication to our needs. They showed us they care, and that they're going to be there for the long haul."

Steel Hector & Davis currently relies on three CoreBuilder 3500 switches at the network core in the Miami and West Palm Beach offices. The Layer 3 switches have Fast Ethernet links to Compaq Proliant servers. In addition, the 320-user Miami office has 32 SuperStack II 1100 workgroup Ethernet switches, and the 120-user West Palm Beach has 10. The Super Stack II 1100s in each location provide 10 Mbps switched Ethernet connections to users' desktops. The third office on the network, Tallahassee, has 25 users and relies on three SuperStack II 1100 switches to run its Fast/switched Ethernet LAN.

The firm is also using 3Com Fast EtherLink(R) 10/100 network interface cards (NICs) in desktop PCs. Steel Hector & Davis will soon use 3Com's Transcend(R) Enterprise Manager with remote monitoring (RMON) to configure, manage and control the network from a single desktop management console. "3Com is giving us an enterprise solution we can count on now and for many years to come," Rorabaugh concluded.

About 3Com

With more than 200 million customers worldwide, 3Com Corporation connects more people to information in more ways than any other networking company. 3Com delivers innovative information access products and network system solutions to large, medium and small enterprises; carriers and network service providers; PC OEMs; and consumers. 3Com. More connected.(TM) For further information, visit 3Com's World Wide Web site at www.3com.com or the press site at www.3com.com/pressbox.

3Com, Transcend, SuperStack, CoreBuilder and EtherLink are registered trademarks and More connected. is a trademark of 3Com Corporation. All other brands and names are the property of their respective owners.