No sooner had we posted this morning on the offer / counter-offer bidding war between Dell and HP for the ownership of 3PAR that the Financial Times began reporting that the war was over, and HP walked away the winner. Hewlett-Packard appeared to have won the bidding battle for data storage technology company 3Par on Thursday, after Dell said it would not raise its offer and was ending talks. I spoke with John Furrier briefly before he went on the air this morning at VMworld on #theCube, and he took great joy in pointing out that he was on record predicting the outcome of the auction. “HP wins big here, mainly because 3PAR’s technology looks is set to become an essential piece of HP’s thin provisioning segment,” said John. �

It’s been eighteen days since the bidding war over 3Par began, and we’re wondering if there’s even an end in sight. 3Par released a statement this morning saying that HP raised its bid again, to $33 per share. That’s an increase from its previously announced offer of $30 per share. This “Superior Proposal” aims to woo 3Par as far away from Dell’s initial acquisition offering as it can, with the terms of agreement allowing the server company to entertain other offers. That’s exactly what 3Par has been doing, stretching this bidding war out for nearly three weeks. Back in August, John Furrier predicted 3PAR bidding would exceed $2 Billion, and predicted back in May that storage would be the next hot market to watch for merg

Big news coming from Apple’s highly anticipated press event in San Francisco this morning; Steve Jobs unveiled the all new Apple TV, iTunes 10 with a Ping social network, and completely redesigned iPods across all its models. This raises the bar for competitors like Amazon, which made an announcement regarding its own streaming initiatives this week as well.  Apple has predictably landed several large broadcast and large brand partnerships for its new streaming content offerings, with sprinkles of commercial marketing opportunities layered into its iTunes Ping social music discovery tools (i.e. concert recommendations lead to more ticket sales). There's also the question of how open Ping's social network will become--what type o

We're live!  The team at VMware and SiliconANGLE is rolling live, at VMworld.  We've got a great lineup of guests that are dropping by The CUBE, doing interviews with John Furrier and Dave Vellante.   Here's the schedule of VMworld 2010 Live "The Cube" powered by SiliconANGLE.com. John Troyer, VMware community manager and VMworld Live's executive producer, in conjunction with the SiliconANGLE team have put together a live video coverage program called #theCube at the VMworld 2010 blogger lounge. The VMworld blogger lounge and The Cube will be the center of all the social media action pumping out content (blog, live video, and images) as well as providing a place to check in and connect with friends and follower to share their ex

Tune in today (August 30)  as we kick off our wall-to-wall coverage of VMWorld 2010, live from SiliconAngle’s “The Cube” (see below) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California.

The team at VMware and SiliconANGLE are proud to announce the schedule of VMworld 2010 Live "The Cube" powered by SiliconANGLE.com. John Troyer, VMware community manager and VMworld Live's executive producer, in conjunction with the SiliconANGLE team have put together a live video coverage program called #theCube at the VMworld 2010 blogger lounge The VMworld blogger lounge and The Cube will be the center of all the social media action pumping out content (blog, live video, and images) as well as providing a place to check in and connect with friends and follower to share their experiences and knowledge with each other and the world. Live Video - The Cube The CUBE is part of SiliconANGLE’s continuous coverage of cloud comp

Though Amazon has been proclaiming its impressive increase in 3rd-Gen Kindle sales, issuing press releases flaunting this claim, they really haven't bared an actual figure.  Just how many Kindle devices were sold? From Amazon: "Kindle is the best-selling product on Amazon.com for two years running and our new generation Kindles are continuing that momentum," said Steven Kessel, senior vice president, Amazon Kindle. "Readers are excited about all that the new Kindle has to offer--50 percent better contrast, 20 percent faster page turns, 15 percent lighter, up to one month of battery life--and a new price of only $139." Well, that’s good news but this is rather puzzling than interesting. What we want to know is how much exactly. Appare

As part of our continuous coverage of the Dell, 3PAR, and now HP, I've done some digging around over the past week talking with dozens of sources on this deal.  We've been all over this 3PAR story and I broke the news that Frank Quattrone was leading the M&A for 3Par. 3PAR is apparently giving Dell three business days to negotiate an amendment to its merger offer.  Dell had offered $1.15bn for the firm but the deal was countered by HP.  3PAR's board is now evaluating the HP offer. According to public filing with the SEC, 3PAR intends to engage in discussions with HP regarding its unsolicited acquisition proposal, and share non-public information with HP regarding 3PAR, in order to more fully evaluate HPs proposal. Is t

Someone has to say it. The debate surrounding so-called net neutrality proposed policies reminds me of a heavily Marxist-influenced student protest from 1968. It's all about keeping private property in name only, while regulating the product so that it can only be provided in a way defined by the government. In other words, it's a regulated utility which may just as well not be a private enterprise at all. The "debate" regarding net neutrality is in fact no debate at all, reading 99% of the commentary on the matter. It's equivalent to the debate surrounding "rent control" in many cities, say 50 years ago. Just prohibit private property owners to run their businesses the way they want, and the consumer will benefit un

HP today submitted a proposal to 3PAR to acquire the company for $24 a share, a 33% premium over the offer Dell made last week. This puts the value of 3PAR at nearly $1.6B today -- whereas the company’s valuation had never come anywhere close to approaching $1B prior to Dell’s offer. Interestingly, in June, 3PAR’s CEO Dave Scott in a Q&A session with analysts that I attended specifically stated that one of the reasons in his opinion that 3PAR had not been pursued by potential acquirers at this point in time was that companies were afraid to start a bidding war and lose. While self-serving, I thought this perspective was interesting and it seems to be playing out on the main business stage this week. In a conference call today, H