HP makes $1.5B bid for 3Par, topping Dell's offer

Hewlett-Packard Co. is bidding $1.5 billion for data storage provider 3Par Inc., offering 33 percent more than what rival Dell Inc. agreed to pay for the company just a week earlier.


The tussle for control of 3Par comes as both HP and Dell have been looking to expand beyond personal computers in search of bigger profits. The company they both want to buy provides products for organizing data on corporate servers. Those tools could help either company go deeper into "cloud computing," the growing practice of offering software on a subscription basis over the Internet.

The offer announced Monday raised questions about the direction HP is taking since CEO Mark Hurd was forced to resign earlier this month. Hurd was pushed out for filing inaccurate expense reports for his dinners and other outings with a former HP marketing contractor. LINK