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News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

3PAR Bidding War, Continued: Dell Matches HP’s Bid, HP Ups The Ante

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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. Earlier this week, HP proposed to acquire 3PAR instead, offering as much as $24 per share in cash, or roughly $1.6 billion.

Yesterday, Dell matched HP’s bid, offering $24.30 per share, or approximately $1.6 billion.

Didn’t take long for HP to respond, though: the company’s latest offer goes as high as $1.8 billion.

A good old-fashioned bidding war indeed.

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.

VMware Debuts Zimbra Appliance, Makes All Zimbra Products Available to Its Customers and Partners

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VMware recently launched the Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance, an enterprise-class email and collaboration solution delivered as a virtual appliance.

Designed to run on the VMware vSphere platform, the Zimbra Appliance helps reduce the cost and complexity of infrastructure management.

In addition, VMware announced that Zimbra, which it acquired in February 2010, is now fully integrated within VMware.

All Zimbra products are now available via VMware’s extensive sales and channel partner ecosystem, providing VMware’s 190,000 customers and 25,000 partners full access to Zimbra’s email and collaboration product suite. Zimbra customers are also now supported by VMware’s Global Support Services, the world’s largest virtualization support organization.

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance is currently available starting at USD $ 625/25 mailboxes for a perpetual license. For the latest information on Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance and pricing please visit: www.zimbra.com/products.

The full suite of Zimbra products is now available through the VMware sales and via VMware’s more than 25,000 channel partners. For more information, please visit:  www.vmware.com/products/zimbra/

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.

Parallels’ New President: Former Microsoft VP Birger Steen

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Parallels, a provider of cloud services automation and virtualization software, recently announced the appointment of Birger Steen as President of the company.

Mr. Steen comes to Parallels from Microsoft, where he was the Vice President of Small and Medium Business and Distribution, and will join the company in September 2010.

Prior to his current role at Microsoft, Mr. Steen held several senior positions at the company since joining in 2002. He started his Microsoft career at as General Manager in Norway and then moved on to serve as General Manager and Vice President of Microsoft Russia.

During his tenure there, Microsoft’s revenues from Russia grew tenfold.

Before Microsoft Mr. Steen was CEO of Scandinavia Online AB which was listed on the Stockholm and Oslo Stock Exchanges in 2000 under his leadership.

In his new role he will report to Mr. Beloussov and will be responsible for sales, marketing, product management, and support, as well as assisting Mr. Beloussov in transforming the company for the next stage of growth.

Birger holds a Master of Science in Computer Science and Industrial Engineering from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim and earned his MBA from INSEAD in France.