HP closes 3Par purchase

HP has finalised the acquisition of data-storage specialist 3Par following a successful tender for the company, according to a statement released on Monday.

The deal closed for a total of $2.35bn (£1.48bn), representing a cash value of $33 per share and significantly more than the $1.6bn HP first bid for 3Par in an effort to trump Dell.

The purchase allows HP to move into the enterprise-class public and private cloud environments. "As part of the HP Converged Infrastructure portfolio, which integrates servers, storage, networking and management technologies, 3Par solutions will further strengthen HP's ability to simplify datacentre environments for clients," the company in a statement.

Bidding for 3Par opened with Dell's offer of $1.15bn, but this was soon trumped by an HP counter-offer of $1.6bn. Dell was then issued a three-day deadline to respond with a further offer, which it duly did, matching HP's $1.6bn bid.

Just a few hours later, HP submitted a revised bid of $27 per share, for a total of $1.8bn. Dell responded by raising its tender to $32 per share, but this was not enough to dissuade HP, which put in the final bid at $33 per share, bringing it to a total of $2.35bn.

Upon withdrawing from the bidding war, Dell received a $72m termination fee.

On Thursday, Hugh Jenkins, Dell's head of public-sector enterprise marketing, EMEA, told ZDNet UK that the company will concentrate on its Exanet and Ocarina Networks acquisitions to fulfil its virtualised storage requirements.

"The vision there is to be able to bring a unified storage architecture and break down the lines of demarcation between file and block-based storage," said Jenkins.