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HP`s Storage Play: Eight Ways 3Par Will Help HP Dominate
By Ericka Chickowski on 2010-09-14



HP's intense bidding war with Dell over 3Par has provided just enough fodder to keep company headlines focused on the business rather than on the continuing saga of Mark Hurd. The two technology vendors bid 3Par up well above where Wall Street had valued the company, and some observers believe the price paid was too high. But for all the drama that has surrounded the HP-Dell duel for the utility computing company, very little attention has been paid on what it is, exactly, that made 3Par so covetable in the first place. Let's take a look at the company and what it offers HP in exchange for its outlay of dough.
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Maturity


A mature company as far as tech sector targets go, 3Par was founded back in 1999, when clouds only meant thunder and rain to IT executives.

Technical Vision


3Par helped pave the IT foundation for scalable IT as a utility models by helping to lead the charge into "thin provisioning" for storage architecture.

Technical Vision


The company's flagship InServ SAN storage line is built on thin provisioning and utility computing fundamentals, enabling customers to more easily deploy the multi-tenant platforms that make anything -as-a-Service possible.

Lasting Power


3Par began pushing its utility message among a number of competitors, but it was the only one to stick around. It outlasted Cereva Networks and Zambeel, which busted up in 2002 and 2003, as well as YottaYotta, which EMC picked up in a fire sale.

Performance


3Par grew sales in 2009 by 80 percent. It was ranked fourth in Fortune's Fast Tech 25 list released in April.

Channels


A channel-friendly organization, 3Par stands to benefit greatly from HP's channel resources. Said

Channels


Said David Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager of HP's enterprise servers, storage and networking division about the pairing: "What's great about us is we have multiple channels to market, including a large partner network. We have many routes to market that are not available to a smaller company and even to larger companies."

Share


Some economic analysts predict that the existing customers and technological advantages that 3Par brings to HP will help it rapidly take share from IBM and EMC in the high end external data storage market.

Share


Economist Dian Chu predicts that by the end of 2011 HP will vault over IBM for second place in the market. As it stands, HP has 11 percent share, behind IBM's 14 percent and EMC's 25 percent.

Competitive Advantage


The competitive blocking advantages HP gains over Dell--and other storage vendors, for that matter--cannot be overemphasized. It's why the companies raised their offers so many times in the first place. 3Par is a rare bird in this niche.

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