Dell has agreed to acquire virtualised storage solution provider 3PAR for $1.15 billion (735.2 million), as the Texas-based giant looks to expand its data management offerings.
3PAR was one of the pioneers of thin provisioning and its solutions for multi-tenant cloud environments come in on-demand packages to help businesses spend only on storage they require.
Dell believes the purchase will help it eventually provide customers with a 50 per cent cost reduction in data management.
According to Dell, 3PAR's services can help companies cut storage administration costs by up to 90 per cent.
"3PAR brings the same values of performance, agility and ease-of-use to higher end, virtualised storage deployments as EqualLogic does for the entry-level and mid-range, rounding out our industry-leading solutions portfolio," said Brad Anderson, Dell senior vice president for the Enterprise Product Group.
"With Dell we combine a powerful, virtualised storage platform with an outstanding distribution network to deliver this value to an even broader set of customers," added David Scott, president and chief executive of 3PAR.
The purchase of 3PAR, founded in 1999, is expected to be completed before the end of the year and Dell will pay $18 per share.
3PAR will become a part of Dell's storage portfolio, which also includes EqualLogic a company the computer manufacturer acquired in 2007.
In June, Dell launched a range of storage products as it heralded the "virtual era", including a firmware 5.0 update for its EqualLogic portfolio.
