Dell may have won the bidding war for 3PAR, but HP has announced its another strategic move, with the acquisition of Stratavia.  The privately-held database and application automation company will be folded into HP to improve its a la cart storage and cloud-computing solutions for businesses and organizations.

Based in Denver, Stratavia will be incorporated into the HP Storage and Solutions portfolio.  Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The one-stop shop approach continues to gain popularity.  HP states,

As applications and IT environments become increasingly complex, organizations need to automate changes that range from large-scale application updates to simple one-line configuration updates with consistency and control,” said Bill Veghte, executive vice president, Software and Solutions, HP. “Stratavia’s database and application automation solutions, combined with HP’s leading Business Service Automation portfolio, give organizations a one-stop shop for infrastructure and application deployment management.”

The automation tools involved in Stratavia are the focal point here.  The natural progression for enterprise cloud computing is to provide more solution-based offerings, striving towards efficiency and low costs.  This service-centric ideology is becoming standard for virtualization companies looking to stand out from the crowd.  Of course, large players like HP and Dell are snapping up storage and virtual hosted solutions companies in an effort to expand their hardware and software fronts, as devices become more integrated with the solutions they offer.