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Acquisitions

The Battle Over 3PAR: Dell Bids, HP Outbids, Dell Ponders New Bid, Third Suitor Emerges

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ll be aware that Dell recently agreed to acquire data storage company data storage company 3PAR for for $18 per share or roughly $1.13 billion. Yesterday, HP proposed to acquire 3PAR instead, offering as much as $24 per share in cash, or roughly $1.6 billion.

Dell is obviously studying the situation and, according to a single source cited by Bloomberg this morning, the company is preparing to trump HP’s offer.

3PAR, meanwhile has said a third possible suitor had expressed interest in taking over the company, but that company’s identity hasn’t been revealed.

CA Technologies Buys Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructure Consulting Firm 4Base Technology

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CA Technologies last week announced the acquisition of privately-held 4Base Technology, a virtualization and cloud infrastructure consulting firm. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

4Base will become the CA Virtualization and Cloud Strategy group, a competency practice within the CA Services division.

With experience in more than 300 engagements, 4Base will help customers move quickly, pragmatically and successfully from virtualization to cloud by providing strategic advice and implementation expertise.

Andi Mann, vice president of virtualization product marketing at CA, notes in his blog post, this acquisition will help customers overcome the many difficult barriers to adopting and expanding virtualization and cloud computing, including staffing and skills issues, Line-of-Business (LOB) issues, ‘VM sprawl’ and ‘VM stall’, and heterogeneous virtualization knowledge.

Quest Software Has Completed Its Acquisition of Surgient

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Quest Software earlier this month announced the completion of its acquisition of privately held Surgient, a leader in private cloud automation software.

Surgient, located in Austin, Texas, will expand Quest virtualization management capabilities by enabling organizations to automate the deployment and management of secure private cloud infrastructures to gain business agility and reduce costs.

Private cloud computing is emerging as a fundamental requirement for businesses. As a leading provider of cloud automation solutions, Surgient provides a patented and proven technology that supports heterogeneous hypervisor environments and diverse customer environments, including mid-market, enterprise, and managed service providers.

Quest will continue to market and sell the Surgient cloud platform and offer customers the company’s popular Cloud Express, which provides a private cloud of 30 CPUs in 30 days.

GI Partners, Management Buy Out SoftLayer Technologies

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SoftLayer Technologies, the  on-demand data center services provider, earlier this month announced a transaction in which its management team and GI Partners, a private trans-Atlantic investment firm, have acquired all of the equity in SoftLayer.

Since its founding, SoftLayer has revolutionized hosting through its unswerving commitment to innovation and automation. At a pivotal time in the industry, as increased connectivity, virtualization advances, and cloud service innovations dramatically reshape the landscape, SoftLayer is poised to continue playing a significant role in the industry’s transformation.

DH Capital served as exclusive financial advisor to SoftLayer in connection with the transaction.

Quest Buys Private Cloud Automation Software Maker Surgient

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Quest Software has announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Surgient, a provider of private cloud automation software.

The Austin, Texas-based company’s Surgient Platform enables organizations to deploy and manage secure cloud infrastructures to gain business agility and reduce costs.

With the Surgient Automation Platform, organizations can create robust and secure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds that may be shared across the organization. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close during the third quarter of 2010.

Private cloud computing is emerging as a fundamental requirement for businesses.

According to a recent IDC survey, 73 percent of all organizations are evaluating, planning or have already implemented private cloud strategies. As a leading provider of cloud automation solutions, Surgient provides a patented and proven technology that supports heterogeneous hypervisor environments and diverse customer environments including mid-market, enterprise and managed service providers.

Surgient has more than 60 customers with 160 successful deployments.

EMC To Buy Data Warehousing And Analytics Company Greenplum With Cash

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EMC today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire California-based Greenplum,  a privately-held, fast-growing provider of disruptive data warehousing technology, a key enabler of “big data” clouds and self-service analytics.

Upon completion of the acquisition, Greenplum will form the foundation of a new data computing product division within EMC’s Information Infrastructure business.
Greenplum utilizes a “shared-nothing” massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture that has been designed from the ground up for analytical processing using virtualized x86 infrastructure. Greenplum is capable of delivering 10 to 100 times the performance of traditional database software at a dramatically lower cost. Data-driven businesses around the world, including NASDAQ OMX, NYSE Euronext, Skype, Equifax, T-Mobile and Fox Interactive Media have adopted Greenplum for sophisticated, high-performance data analytics.

The acquisition of Greenplum will be an all-cash transaction and is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2010, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

The acquisition is not expected to have a material impact to EMC GAAP and non-GAAP EPS for the full 2010 fiscal year.

Upon close, Bill Cook will lead the new data computing product division and report to Pat Gelsinger. EMC will continue to offer Greenplum’s full product portfolio to customers and plans to deliver new EMC Proven reference architectures as well as an integrated hardware and software offering designed to improve performance and drive down implementation costs.