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. “The value for HP, despite the purchase price, is clear.”