A definitive agreement between HP and 3PAR will see the utility storage supplier become part of the world's largest technology company. Dell was also looking to acquire 3PAR, but HP's $US33 per share offer - valuing the company at $US2.34 billion - clinched the deal.

Dell's original bid for 3PAR was $US18 per share at a time when the market price was below $US10. After HP became involved, that ratcheted up to $US32 before HP's $US33 offer closed the sale.

The acquisition should be completed by the end of the year.

"As part of HP, 3PAR's agile, efficient storage solutions will truly thrive, particularly given HP's ability to accelerate investment in our products and reach new customers around the world," said David Scott, president and chief executive officer at 3PAR.

"3PAR has built a reputation for delivering enterprises and cloud computing service providers the ability to do more with less. HP's global reach, strong routes to market and our shared culture of innovation will allow even more organisations to experience the transformative value of 3PAR's technology," he added.

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Scott joined 3PAR as president and CEO from HP, where he was general manager of the XP enterprise storage business.

Dave Donatelli, HP's executive vice president and general manager, enterprise servers, storage and networking, said "HP and 3PAR is a winning combination that will accelerate HP's converged infrastructure strategy and bolster our ability to provide customers with the industry's highest levels of performance, efficiency and reliability."

3PAR describes its products as highly virtualised, dynamically tiered, multi-tenant storage arrays built for public and private cloud computing. Technologies such as thin provisioning (the on-demand physical allocation of storage space to a server that 'thinks' it already has a volume of a certain fixed capacity) are used to reduce power consumption and the total cost of ownership.