HP in the ring with Dell for 3PAR

Wow, I was wrong. I thought the Dell-3PAR was a done deal. Obviously, it is not because HP has decided to fight it out with Dell to acquire 3PAR. And the analysts on the Net are buzzing that HP will win because they have deeper pockets than Dell.

Will we see an ala-EMC-NetApp fight all over again? I hope it is just not about price because HP's price is now USD1.6 billion over USD1.15 billion of Dell.

If we dissect the situation, which I did for Dell in my last blog, I mentioned that Dell will have a hard time getting the entire storage story to gel as well as getting those disparate technologies together.

In HP's case, it will be even more difficult because HP has XP, EVA, MSA, LeftHand Networks, IBRIX, Polyserve. Where is 3PAR going to fit in? I am sure HP is not forking the money for 3PAR to kill the product later on. In my opinion, 3PAR will fit in between XP and EVA but there are a lot of overlaps. This would mean that it will hurt the XP business but it will hurt EVA even more.

HP has put a lot of years of R&D into EVA and though, the technology was flagging some years back, HP has managed to revive EVA strongly in the last couple of years. Sales is doing well and I believe a big portion of EVA sales came with the momentum of HP Blade Servers and the HP juggernaut. Still, EVA has earned its rights to be one of the biggies in the storage world.

3PAR, that's a different story altogether. Dynamic, brash, Sun culture. Will that work out for HP? We shall see.

Till then, let's bring out the popcorn, 3D-glasses and watch how this slugfest will turn out.

Happy birthday Malaysia! Selamat Hari Merdeka!