Not much details yet, just notice that HP has upped it’s bid to $33/share for 3PAR a few minutes ago. The front page of the Wall Street Journal has about all I’ve heard from CNBC
Hewlett-Packard has raised its bid for 3PAR to $33 a share; Dell also offered a higher price and negotiated a higher breakup fee
What it seems like is at the last minute Dell finally came through with something around $30/share, sounds like they really struggled to get that one through. HP of course being decisive came back immediately with $33/share.
Here is another article that says the reason why the bidding is so intensive is 3PAR is the only game in town, there is no room for second best –
Looking at the landscape, 3Par is the only real alternative to EMC and Hitachi in terms of high end storage. EMC has its own ambitions for data center dominance, while HDS is part of a much larger conglomerate. If you believe you need to own storage and server, both to fulfill the vision above and to avoid partnering with a competitor, than 3Par is the only place to get this type of deep high end storage technology. Given HP and Dell have a much larger sales channel than 3Par, these guys can immediately double, triple or quadruple sales from 3Par products overnight once it is part of their catalogue. Both reasons afford the premium we are seeing.