Storage stand-off
Virtualized storage company 3PAR has accepted an increased acquisition offer from Dell of about $1.6bn as the bidding war between Dell and HP continues.
Dell's deal works out at $24.30 per share in cash, an increase on its previous offer of $18 per share that was upped by rival HP, which is also after the storage company.
It remains to be seen whether HP will try and out-bid Dell again, pushing 3PAR's value higher, although Dell and 3PAR have signed an amendment to the previous agreement, reflecting the new offer price and the acquisition is poised to go through unless HP counter bids.
Dell is so keen to get its mitts on the firm as it has said it complements and extends its current storage portfolio.
"Storage is at the forefront of this strategy. With the 3PAR acquisition, Dell with have the broadest set of differentiated storage solutions in the market today," said Dave Johnson, VP at Dell corporate strategy.
While HP has pushed the cost of the 3PAR acquisition substantially higher for Dell (by around half a billion dollars!) it may yet decide it cannot afford to let its competitor bolster its storage portfolio further, although any prospect of snapping up a bargain in the recession may be arguably over.
In the mean time, HP has acquired Stratavia, a privately held database and application automation company based in Denver, to boost its software and solutions portfolio.
HP said the acquisition will add deployment, configuration and management solutions for enterprise databases, middleware and packaged applications to its arsenal.
The addition of Stratavia's services mean that HP clients will now have a comprehensive application automation solution that bridges the gap between application development and operational teams and will support all aspects of the application life cycle, from modeling an application and releasing it into production, to ongoing management and the underlying infrastructure, according to HP.
Bill Veghte, VP of software and solutions at HP, said: "As applications and IT environments become increasingly complex, organizations need to automate changes that range from large-scale application updates to simple one-line configuration updates with consistency and control. Stratavia's database and application automation solutions, combined with HP's leading Business Service Automation portfolio, give organizations a one-stop shop for infrastructure and application deployment management."
HP also said Stratavia's services will also enhance its own cloud service automation solution by simplifying and automating the deployment of databases, middleware and packaged applications in cloud computing environments.
