Hell just got a little colder. It seems 3PAR was bought by Dell for ~$1.15 billion this morning(news is so fresh as of this posting the official 3PAR press release isn’t posted yet, just a blank page).. I woke my rep up and asked him what happened and he wasn’t aware that it had gone down, they did a good job at keeping it quiet.
It’s not like 3PAR was in any trouble, they had no debt, and the highest margins in the industry along with good sales. They haven’t been making too much profits mainly because they are hiring so many new people to grow the company. In my area since I started using 3PAR they’ve gone from 1 Sales and 1 SE to 3 Sales and 2 SEs, and they’ve really expanded over seas and stuff. I would of expected them to hold out for a few more billion, $1 seems far too cheap.
I have read several complaints about how Equallogic has gone downhill since Dell bought them (from original Equallogic users, not that I’ve ever used that stuff so don’t know whether or not they are accurate), I fear the same may happen to 3PAR. But it will take a little while for it to start.
I think the only hope 3PAR has at this point is if Dell keeps them independent for as long as possible. Outside of their DCS division Dell really shows they have no ability to innovate.
I wonder what Marc Farley thinks, as a former Equallogic/Dell employee now he’s at 3PAR, and Dell came and found him again..
Maybe I’ll get lucky and this will just turn out to be a bad dream, some evil hacker out there manipulating the stock price by planting news.
Do me one favor Dell, stay the hell away from Extreme Networks! With Brocade having bought Foundry, HP having bought 3COM. I was told by a Citrix guy that Juniper tried to buy Extreme shortly after they bought Netscreen instead of making their own switches, from what I recall he said Juniper bought Netscreen for $500M which was way over inflated, and Extreme demanded $1 billion at the time. There’s not many other Enterprise/Service provider independent Ethernet companies still around. There is Force10, Dell can go buy them be a lot cheaper too.
I suppose more than anything else, Dell buying 3PAR is Dell admitting the Equallogic technology doesn’t hold a candle to 3PAR technology, ok maybe a candle but not much more than that!
It may be 6:51AM but I think I need a drink.
[…] that’s more like it, HP offered $1.6 Billion to acquire 3PAR this morning topping Dell’s offer by 33%. Perhaps the 3cV solution can finally be fully backed by […]
Pingback by HP to the rescue « TechOpsGuys.com — August 23, 2010 @ 6:03 am