It looks like the bidding war for 3PAR could be over. Dell has just issued a release indicating that it will not increase its most recent $2 billion proposal to acquire 3PAR, and the company’s has ended acquisition talks for the data storage company. Dell is entitled to receive a $72 million break-up fee from 3PAR upon the termination of its merger agreement.

This morning, HP upped the ante today with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR has accepted HP’s bid. Dell also said that it’s improved offer included a proposed commercial relationship and an increased break-up fee.

It looks like we’re back to square one again. Dell has matched HP’s $2 billion offer to buy 3PAR, and HP upped the ante today with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR has accepted HP’s bid.

Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share or $1.13 billion, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP then effectively outbid the company and offered $1.6 billion, but Dell matched that offer yesterday, after which HP made a renewed bid for $1.8 billion. HP then offered $2 billion last Friday.

When Salesforce.com bought crowdsourced business contact database Jigsaw for $142 million earlier this year, the CRM giant said that it would combine its suite of applications with Jigsaw’s model for the automation of acquiring and keeping up-to-date business contact data. Today, Salesforce is unveiling Jigsaw’s deep integration into the company’s platform, Jigsaw for Salesforce CRM.

Jigsaw will now deliver real-time updates to contact and company information within Salesforce CRM through communication platform Salesforce Chatter. Jigsaw, which uses a Wikipedia-style crowd-sourcing model to bring in data around business contacts, has been incorporated into CRM applications to provide on-demand data, and analytics on the health of data and on usage.

At VMworld today, VMware has announced that it has acquired two enterprise companies today–IT performance analytics company Integrien and TriCipher, an authentication system for cloud hosted SaaS applications. Both acquisitions are expected to close in the third quarter of 2010. Financial details of the transactions were not disclosed.

TriCipher’s myOneLogin is an on-demand identity and access management service that allows users one single sign-on to more than 4,000 apps, including Salesforce, WebEx and Google Apps. The company has raised $33 million to date. TriCipher’s technology will be added to “multiple VMware initiatives, including identity-based security, integration of hybrid clouds and managed access to SaaS application from any device, where and when a user needs it.”

Yottaa, web analytics and performance platform, has raised $4 million in series A funding from General Catalyst Partners, Stata Venture Partners and Cambridge West Ventures.

Here we go again. HP just offered $2 billion, or $30 per share in cash for data storage company 3PAR. This morning, Dell announced that 3PAR had accepted its increased offer to acquire the storage leader for $27 per share in cash, or approximately $1.8 billion.

Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share or $1.13 billion, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP then effectively outbid the company and offered $1.6 billion, but Dell matched that offer yesterday, after which HP made a renewed bid for $1.8 billion.

This morning, we saw Dell’s announcement this morning that 3PAR had accepted its increased offer to acquire the storage company for $24.30 per share in cash, or approximately $1.6 billion, net of 3PAR’s cash. Now HP just upped the ante, offering $1.8 billion for 3PAR, or $27 per share in cash.

Clearly these companies want 3PAR. Bad. Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP subsequently outbid Dell for the data storage company, offering $24 per share in cash, or also roughly $1.6 billion at the time. But Dell and 3PAR signed an amendment to the agreement reflecting the new offer price, which brings its bid up to par with HP’s offer.

A week after purchasing Fortify, HP has made a purchase today, acquiring Stratavia, a database and data center automation company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Stratavia develops and markets database, server and run book automation software which helps customers reduce the cost of operating their enterprise environments. The software is designed to control application deployment and management in hybrid IT environments as well as simplify the deployment of applications in the cloud.

Salesforce just released Q2 financial results today, posting record revenue of $394 million, an increase of 25% on a year-over-year basis. Q2 GAAP diluted earnings per share decreased 35% year-over-year to $0.11, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was flat year-over-year at $0.29. Net Income came in at $14.7 million, down from $21.1 million in the same quarter in 2009.

The company added 5,100 paying customers during the quarter, 500 of which came through the acquisition of Jigsaw earlier this year. Salesforce says that it currently has 82,400 paying customers in total.

Marin Software, a startup that creates search engine management software for advertisers and agencies, is now offering advanced applications for advertising on Facebook.

Marin’s Search Marketer platform now offers advertisers and agencies the ability to manage Facebook Ads alongside paid search programs on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Advanced solutions for Facebook include algorithmic bidding, audience segmentation, and ad rotation features. Campaigns on Facebook can be segmented by gender, age, geography, or even likes and interests of audiences.

In the wake of former CEO Mark Herd’s sexual harassement scandal, HP is announcing that it is acquiring Fortify, a software security company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Fortify’s Software Security Assurance products and services protect companies from security threats in busines software applications. The company’s software evaluates and test software code for security flaws while programs are actually being developed. Fortify has previously collaborated with HP, integrating its software with HP products in June 2009.

Intel has just announced that it will acquire Texas Instruments’ cable modem product line. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2010, were not disclosed.

Unsurprisingly, Intel says the acquisition will help further its foray into providing chips to the cable and consumer electronics industries. Intel wants to be able to provide products that provide on foundation for consumer elextronics devices such as set top boxes, digital TVs, and blu-ray disc players. The unit’s advanced system-on-chip (SoC) products will be based on Intel’s Atom processors.

Only days after buying DataCap, Big Blue has made another purchase. IBM is acquiring marketing software giant Unica approximately $480 million, or approximately $21 per share. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Unica, a publicly held company that traded on the Nasdaq exchange, develops an enterprise marketing management software that helps companies to manage web marketing efforts, including web and customer analytics, search marketing, email marketing, and website marketing/personalization.

IBM has acquired Datacap, a company that provides a data and document capturing and processing software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Datacap software automates image and data entry from a variety of documents and forms, including medical claims, tax returns and highly variable documents such as invoices and shipping documents for more precise business outcomes. Datacap extracts and converts data from a number of file types, including email files, JPEG and GIF image files, and PowerPoint presentations in seconds.

Cloud-based storage and sharing application Box.net has focused on offering its content management system wherever the workforce is, whether that be in the office, or on a mobile device. The startup offers iPhone and iPad apps, that allow users to access, share and collaborate on the go. Today, Box is upgrading its iPhone and iPad apps with the ability to access content even without a Wifi connection.

The new update to the apps allows users to save files for offline access so that users can read any content even if their mobile app doesn’t have wireless connectivity. The update also allows users to sync saved files with updated versions when a collaborator makes a change on any Box platform. Box has added support for iOS4, fast app switching, and high-res graphics.

Imaginatik, the developer of an idea management software for enterprises, has released a new version of its offering, Called Idea Central, the software aims to provide a collaborative environment to share, evaluate and curate ideas within an organization.

Idea Central has added an activity monitor to give users a realtime visibility into activity within a network, and event analytics, which helps administrators track and monitor author activity within an idea network. The software also includes additional e-mail configurations, custom workflow alerts, and mobile integration.

Google has long been touting the deployment of its productivity suite and Microsoft Office-killer Google Apps to the City of Los Angeles. The City planned to equip its 34,000 employees with Google Apps, replacing Novell’s GroupWise system, the e-mail technology provider that LA had previously been using. But unfortunately, the process of transitioning the government entity over to the cloud-based system has seen a few speedbumps to say the least. In April, LA City administrators began questioning the move thanks to productivity, security and slowness issues with Google Apps. During that time, there was also the possibility of a delay in the full deployment of the system to employees because of these concerns.

On Friday, we learned that this delay became a reality, and Google missed its June 30 deadline to deploy Apps to all 34,000 employees. But today, at the launch of Google Apps for Government, a specialized version of the suite to meet government security needs, Google said the situation was in fact overblown.

Jive Software, the maker of an all-in-one social enterprise software, has just raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers with existing investor Sequoia Capital participating in the round. This brings Jive’s total funding to a whopping $57 million. Jive’s CEO Tony Zingale declined to reveal the valuation of the company but said that he was “very pleased” with the number. Ted Schlein, Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins, will join Jive’s Board of Directors.

Modeled to offer Facebook-like features to enterprises, Jive’s software combines computing with social collaboration to offer fully-featured social networks for businesses. Its suite of applications help businesses collaborate on a variety of tasks, including holding discussions, communication, sharing documents, blogging, running polls, and social networking features and more.

As more enterprises and SMBs flock to the cloud, the need for cost-effective management platforms have increased. Cloud management startup Skydera is launching today as a centralized platform to manage multiple cloud environments. Incubated in the Founder Institute, Skydera is a platform to manage servers, deploy applications, control user access, track usage and centralize billing. The first 100 TechCrunch readers to register at Skydera will receive free unlimited access to the platform for three months.

Skydera allows for re-created server images and templates for all public and private cloud environments; automatic scaling of compute, storage and network resources based on demand and rule sets; and unified billing report with r analytics of daily, weekly and monthly operating costs for computing.

Startup PiCloud is launching its platform to the public that allows for batch processing, high performance computing and scientific computing applications. PiCloud, which was incubated at Lightspeed Ventures, claims to “obviates servers,” and enables developers, scientists and engineers to set up applications on the cloud easily.

The PiCloud platform aims to simplify cloud computing through three actions. Cloud.call runs your custom function on the cloud, cloud.result retrieves the return value of your function and cloud.map maps your function to multiple arguments. The startup’s library, which supports the Python code, extracts the byte code, source code, and data necessary to move users’ computation to the cloud. PiCloud also offers a dashboard to manage submitted jobs and analyze usage.

IBM reported steady second quarter earnings today, with net income rising 9 percent compared to the second quarter of 2009, to $3.4 billion. Big Blue’s diluted earnings increased 13 percent to $2.61 per share compared with diluted earnings of $2.32 per share in the second quarter of 2009, beating the street estimate of $2.58 per share.

Total revenues for quarter came in at $23.7 billion, a 2 percent increase from the second quarter of 2009, but falling below analyst expectations of $24.2 billion The impact of changes in currency rates since IBM’s first-quarter earnings report in April reduced revenue by approximately $500 million in the second quarter.

Cloud infrastructure company Joyent has acquired Vancouver-based Layerboom Systems, a startup that provides a software to hosting companies that allows them to build and sell virtual private server clouds. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

According to a release, the acquisition will allow Joyent to offer expanded cloud infrastructure services to customers by adding new virtualization technology for Windows and Linux operating systems.

Cloud Platform startup Morphlabs has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding led by Global Gateway Investment Group with Frontera Group, CSK Venture Capital, and AO Capital Partners participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $7 million.

EnterpriseDB has raised $7.5 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. We’ve confirmed the funding with the company. Investors in the round include Translink Capital, KT, Charles River Ventures, and Valhalla Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to over $50 million.

EnterpriseDB, which took an investment from Red Hat last year, offers commercial versions of open source PostgreSQL database, called Postgres Plus.

Zoho’s project collaboration product and Basecamp-rival, Zoho Projects, is getting a much needed feature today: a Bug Tracking tool. Zoho Projects is a team collaboration and project management application that allows teams to plan, track and collaborate on everyday activities and big software projects with external customers.

Tracking software bugs and then prioritizing these bugs and fixing the issues are an integral part of the day-to-day workflow of any software project. Zoho Projects’ new Bug Tracking module allows teams to submit, track and fix software bugs.