Dell has strengthened its position in cloud computing with the acquisition of data storage firm 3Par for $1.15 billion in cash.
The PC-maker said it would pay $18 per share for the firm – a premium of around 86.5% on its stock price – which will round out its portfolio of storage solutions by providing it with a high-end virtualized platform.
“3Par brings the same values of performance, agility and ease-of-use to higher end, virtualized storage deployments as EqualLogic does for the entry-level and mid-range,” Brad Anderson, SVP of Dell’s enterprise product group said referring to the firm’s 2007 acquisition of EqualLogic for $1.4 billion.
The US-headquartered firm claims its thin provisioning and storage virtualization technologies offer lower power consumption than regular modular and monolithic arrays.
It also claims to cut IT costs, by only charging companies for the storage they use.
Dell’s acquisition comes as Gartner predicts global IT spending will begin to grow again in 2010 after a fall in 2009. The research firm expects spending to hit $2.4 trillion this year, an increase of around 3% over 2009.
It is another step towards reducing Dell’s dependence on PC sales, following the example of rivals Oracle and HP, which have both diversified their businesses with major acquisitions, WSJ.com notes.