Following Dell's announcement that it had raised its offer to buy storage systems vendor 3Par, HP increased its bid to $27 per share or total of about $1.8bn. This is an 11 percent premium above Dell's latest offer.

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Dell upped its bid Thursday to $24.30 per share, topping HP's earlier offer to buy the company's outstanding shares for $24 per share, asking 3Par to annul its then standing agreement to sell to Dell for $18 per share.

Dell's new all-cash offer values the company at about $1.6bn, an offer it said 3Par has accepted. The previous buy-out agreement has been amended to reflect the new price and signed by both Dell and 3Par, according to a Dell news release. 

The potential buyer said 3Par would extend the breadth of its storage portfolio, a tactical move for Dell, which only recently announced a new strategy to aggressively expand its enterprise business. The company is in a push to double the size of the business, which today stands at about $16bn, according to Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell. 

3Par's storage platform is optimized for highly virtualized data centers and cloud computing applications. It enables utility-like provision of storage resources, using a clustered multi-tenant architecture. Dell's pitch to 3Par's stockholders is similar to HP's: global market reach and experience in growing acquired businesses.