By Gabriel Perna: Subscribe to Gabriel's RSS feed
August 27, 2010 9:35 PM EDT
With the resignation of longtime CEO Mark Hurd, August has already been a busy month for Hewlett-Packard. Thanks to the company's recent spending habits, it's gotten a lot busier.
Along with a bidding war with Dell to acquire storage provider 3Par, HP has also in the past week successfully acquired a data software firm, Stratavia. Now the most recent rumors have linked the Palo Alto, Calif. company to security software company ArcSight.
Charles King, analyst at Pund-IT, said the overarching theme of HP's acquisitions is a desire to get stronger in the enterprise realm. "Obviously they are trying to improve their enterprise capabilities with different companies. Enterprise is the driver, it's the part of the company that seems to benefit the most."
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Rob Enderle, chief analyst of the Enderle Group, has a slightly different take. He says HP's move represents a defensive strategy against Oracle and IBM, two competitors which are ramping up their software services.
"In the past, HP recognized they needed to catch IBM in the services realm. Now they have to do it software and you also have Oracle entering that space too. They have to significantly increase their software portfolio to stay relevant in a software centric world," Enderle said. Unsurprisingly, Oracle and IBM are two other rumored bidders for ArcSight. None of the three would comment on the rumors.
Both analysts agree the 3Par move is also an offensive move against Dell, which has been trying to branch out on their own into the same market. The highly publicized bidding war has taken another turn as of Friday morning. After getting its $27 per share offer matched by Dell, HP once again upped the ante with a $30 per share cash bid.
"There's almost assuredly a part of HP that wants to keep 3Par out of Dell's hands as much as it wants it for its own reasons. In a side by side comparison, Dell is becoming an increasingly formidable competitor. Keeping 3Par in the fold would be a way to curb that threat," King said.
From Dell's perspective, Enderle said the company a 3Par acquisition helps the company move beyond its reputation as an "aging PC manufacturer," and allows it to focus on cloud computing.
The real winner is 3Par, which has turned from a relative unknown to one of the industry's hottest commodities. Enderle says future companies in a similar financial position and size to 3Par, including ArcSight, might be able to get its valuation ramped up in a similar fashion as well.
"This has nothing to do with 3Par and its own valuation. It's how 3Par can fit into either HP or Dell. So if you were a small company, you're trying to figure ouwhat gap you fill in one of these companies. Nothing says EMC, IBM and Oracle won't continue to be on the acquisition track as well. The right property could get a tremendous amount of money."
HP and Dell did not respond to requests for comment.
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