Dell announced this morning that 3PAR has agreed to be acquired for $1.15Bn. (See previous 3PARpost from last Tuesday).
The attraction for Dell is that it adds an enterprise class product to its portfolio, so fills a stragic aim. Dell will also undoubtedly be able to grow revenues quicker and faster than 3PAR on its own and should deliver on the bottom line quickly. Dell gets a mature virtualized storage platform with plenty of future scope for adding/improving the technology. So Dell grows further in storage, having acquired iSCSI storage provider EqualLogic in 2007, and is further squaring up to big four: HP, IBM, EMC and Oracle. And is also showing HDS and NetApp that it is making life harder for those.
The attraction for 3PAR is simple; it makes sense to cash in now. The 3PAR employees would undoubtedly have preferred to remain independent for many years to come, but will now have to hope to retain as much autonomy as possible. The 3PAR owners conversely have not imagined the return on their investment coming back quickly enough.
And the existing customers? They must keep putting pressure on the new owners guaranteeing them product roll-out of new exciting features and not least the same perception of customer support. The relationship of customer-to-3PAR have been personal throughout its growth period, but Dell will want to do things the Dell way. So there will probably be some fall-out as a result. Will Dell maintain the 3PAR ASIC? Probably for a while, but not indefinitely.
