HP Closes 3PAR Acquisition

HP on Monday closed its $2.35 billion acquisition of 3PAR, and it is ready to start integrating its new storage into its converged infrastructure and cloud computing businesses.

HP said on Sept. 2 it would acquire 3PAR, a Fremont, Calif.-based developer of enterprise-class storage arrays featuring such services as clustering, tiered storage, and thin provisioning, which allows applications to be configured with more storage capacity than is physically available.

The signing of the agreement between the two ended HP's protracted bidding war with Dell over 3PAR. Dell started the bidding war in mid-August with its surprise bid of $1.15 billion for 3PAR.

HP has yet to discuss its integration plans for 3PAR, or how the addition of 3PAR to its storage lineup will impact HP's long-term OEM relationship with Hitachi. HP's XP enterprise-class storage line is OEMed from Hitachi.

The question of how HP will balance its 3PAR technology and its Hitachi OEM relationship was partially answered on Monday, when HP unveiled its new HP StorageWorks P9500 disk array, its version of the new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, or VSP.

Hitachi on Monday introduced the VSP, a follow-on product to its Universal Storage Platform, or USP, on which HP's XP array is based.

Claus Mikkelsen, CTO of storage architectures at Hitachi Data Systems, which is responsible for selling Hitachi storage outside of Japan, said he sees no change in the HP-Hitachi relationship coming as a result of HP's acquisition of 3PAR.

3PAR is mainly a seller of midrange storage, not enterprise storage as many in the industry purport it to be, Mikkelsen said.

"The media is all over 3PAR being an enterprise box," he said. "It's not really enterprise. It's not in the category of USP or VSP, or EMC's DMX or IBM's DS8000. For performance, scalability, reliability, and its ability to work in virtualized environments, there's no comparison."

HP said it plans to discuss its integration plans for 3PAR at a later date.