HP’s Revised Proposal of $33 per Share Values 3PAR at $2.4 billion

HP Wins 3Par At $33, Beats Dell

Until this morning, Dell and Hewlett-Packard were mired in a bidding war over 3Par, a leading provider of utility storage solutions for enterprises. With a final bid of $2.4 billion for the company, HP has emerged the winner. Below we highlight the significance of 3Par and how it may impact HP’s storage in the future.

Utility storage primer

Utility storage is a category of data storage systems designed for utility computing, a form of information technology in which storage and computation are delivered as a metered service, rather like a power utility. 3Par’s unique storage technology powers so-called virtual data centers for mid-sized to large enterprises, including financial service firms, government entities, hosted computing providers, and consumer-oriented Internet companies.

3Par’s value proposition is based on the premise that unused storage is wasteful. Conventional data centers typically use just 10% to 25% of allocated disk space. By contrast, 3Par’s technology allocates disk space only when applications need storage capacity, reducing the total cost of storage by up to 50% according to the company.

As more enterprises shut down their in-house data centers and turn to on-demand storage and computing services delivered via the Internet, their storage needs become more variable and less predictable. This makes 3Par a great fit for the cloud computing era, which helps explain why HP and Dell are competing so fiercely to acquire the company’s proprietary technology.