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 its improved offer included a proposed commercial relationship and an increased break-up fee.

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, which Dell matched.

HP basically doubled Dell’s original bid for 3PAR, which was high to begin with. 3PAR provides a virtualized utility storage platform that enables customers to significant drive down cloud computing infrastructure, storage and associated management costs.

As TechCrunch contributor Steve Cheney wrote last weekend, 3PAR is so valuable because of its “thin provisioning” technology enables disk space to be allocated only when applications need capacity, greatly reducing IT management costs. It doesn’t make sense for HP (or Dell) to try to recreate this technology, so buying is the best option. HP, in particular, wants to increase its innovations, especially after reports that Mark Hurd wasn’t an R&D friendly CEO. Cheney forecasted that HP would win this war, and it looks like he is right.

It looks like this bidding war has come to an end. I’d expect a formal deal with HP to be announced soon.

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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.

According to the release, the 3PAR board of directors has determined that HP’s revised proposal constitutes a “Superior Proposal” (as that term is defined in 3PAR’s merger agreement with Dell). Accordingly, 3PAR notified Dell of its intention to terminate its merger agreement with Dell immediately following the expiration of the three business day period contemplated by, and the satisfaction of the other conditions set forth in, its merger agreement with Dell in order to enter into a merger agreement with HP on the terms set forth in HP’s revised acquisition proposal.

This latest offer more than doubles Dell’s original bid for 3PAR, which was high to begin with. 3PAR provides a virtualized utility storage platform that enables customers to significant drive down cloud computing infrastructure, storage and associated management costs.

It looks like this bidding war has come to an end, folks.

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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.

Jigsaw also provides customers with the ability to see how much data is being actively managed by Jigsaw, and visual reports on how much data is correct, out-of-date or dead in the data graveyard. And Jigsaw leverages Chatter to identify changes to contact and company data in the Salesforce CRM, update and then publish the changes in Chatter in real-time, giving sales reps the ability to see when data is outdated or updated.

Currently, Jigsaw has a database of more than 22 million business contacts and 4 million company profiles that are continually updated by a community of more than 1.4 million individuals. Jigsaw for Salesforce CRM is priced at $29 per user per month on top of existing CRM use charges.

In the past, we’ve been a bit critical of Jigsaw’s model because the company would pay people simply to upload other people’s contact information, possible causing a privacy fiasco. Jigsaw has changed its model since then: people can now see if their personal information has been uploaded, and there is a process to have it removed, at least temporarily. And users are no longer paid cash to upload contacts. Instead they receive points that can be used to download contact other people’s contact information.

This additional feature should only help boost Salesforce’s ever growing revenue. The company saw record sales for the most recent quarter, adding added 5,100 paying customers during the quarter.

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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.”

Integrien, which just raised $8 million in funding, offers companies an IT performance management platform to monitor mission-critical applications and services. The company saw 140% growth year-over-year in 2009, and is now cash-flow positive. Integrien will be combined with VMware vCenter management products.

These aren’t the first acquisitions for VMware this year. Via SpringSource, VMware purchased data management company GemStone, and recently acquired Rabbit Technologies.

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Co-founded by chairman of Nexaweb, Coach Wei, Yottaa offers a free service that monitors and tracks web site performance. The company’s first product, Yottaa Insight, is being released to the public today to allow any user to track the performance and user experience over time, and across multiple geographies. Yottaa Insight also enables users to link their Google Analytics account. And the service will identify problems such as third-party widgets, or network latency or errors with DNS.

Users can also create custom Benchmarks to track their sites, or competitors. And Yottaa will compare the performance of sites to the other sites it is tracking on its network. For now, the service will remain free; as the company is focusing on gathering a user base.

Yottaa faces competition from Keynote Systems, Gomez and others.

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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 latest offer nearly doubles Dell’s original bid for 3PAR, which was high to begin with. 3PAR provides a virtualized utility storage platform that enables customers to significant drive down cloud computing infrastructure, storage and associated management costs.

3PAR clearly must be flattered by this dramatic turn of events; $2 billion is no small sum. And HP is starting to make it very clear that whatever Dell offers, it will offer more. So, when will this end? Will 3PAR be able get to $3 billion?

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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 brought its bid up to par with HP’s offer.

3PAR provides a virtualized utility storage platform that enables customers to significant drive down cloud computing infrastructure, storage and associated management costs.

HP’s Dave Donatelli says in a release: “Our revised proposal offers superior value to 3PAR’s shareholders, while maintaining our disciplined approach to only pursuing acquisitions that we believe will strengthen our portfolio and create long-term value for our shareholders…Not only is our offer superior to Dell’s proposal, HP remains uniquely positioned to execute on this combination given the number of synergies between the two companies.”

It should be interesting to see if Dell continues the bidding war. HP could have just made an offer that 3PAR can’t refuse. Or Dell could propose $2 billion for the company and we’ll revisit this again.

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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.

The Denver-based company has raised over $10 million in funding from Adams Street Ventures and Vista Partners. Stratavia will be added to to HP’s Software and Solutions portfolio.

With both Fortify and Stratavia, HP is targeting the enterprise. And HP tried to outbid Dell for data storage company 3Par, most recently offering $1.6 billion for the company. Unfortunately, Dell rebounded with a $1.6 million offer, which 3Par accepted.

Interestingly, HP’s last two acquisitions, Lala competitor-Melodeo, and smartphone manufacturer Palm, have been in the consumer and hardware space.

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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.

CEO Marc Benioff said that the company will be focusing on hiring in sales and engineering as well as opening up a data center in Japan. Benioff says that the company’s annual customer conference Dreamforce will include a cameo from former U.S. President Bill Clinton as well as music star Stevie Wonder.

Subscription and support revenues were $369 million, an increase of 26% on a year-over-year basis. Professional services and other revenues were $25 million, an increase of 12% on a year-over-year basis. Cash from operations for the fiscal second quarter was approximately $76 million, up 66% year-over-year.

The past few months have clearly been bittersweet for the company. Salesforce was slapped with a patent lawsuit by Microsoft, which was eventually settled. But the company publicly launched its social product Chatter, to the enterprise world and is seeing traction.

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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.

Marin’s software is used by 180 companies including Razorfish, and Macy’s who are both using Marin to target Facebook users. Marin’s customers spend at least $100,000 per month on paid search campaigns across the major search engines, with Marin’s software automatically bidding more than 350 million keywords each night.

As we wrote last week, ad spending on Facebook is expected to reach $1.3 billion in 2010. Integrations on popular search platforms like Marin’s offering should help Facebook reach that goal.

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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.

The unit will be part of Intel’s Digital home Group. Another piece of the puzzle is the fact that Google is partnering with Intel for the launch of Google TV in the Fall. Perhaps this new unit will help boost its technology for this partnership as well as future agreements. And the company’s CEO Paul Otellini said earlier this year that it was looking to boost use of Atom processors in the mobile and digital home device segments. The company stated that its latest chip, named Dragonpoint, offers better audio and video performance, wider and open software support and is cheaper than the competition.

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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.

Unica, which will be folded into IBM’s Software Solutions Group, has more than 1,500 customers including Best Buy, eBay, ING, Monster, Starwood and US Cellular. IBM says that Unica’s technology will help their clients develop more targeted marketing campaigns. Unica will be folded into , which includes a range of industry-focused offerings. Interestingly, IBM also said that recently acquires software companies Coremetrics and Sterling Commerce will also be bundled with Unica’s offering to customers.

This year alone, Big Blue has acquired Big Fix, Coremetrics, Sterling Commerce, Cast Iron Systems, Initiate and Intelliden.

Unica was also on a bit of an acquisition tear this year, buying MakeMeTop and Pivotal Veracity.

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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.

IBM says that the acquisition will help its customers “digitize, manage and automate their information assets, particularly in paper-intensive industries such as healthcare, insurance, government and finance.” Datacap customers the Chicago Department of Public Health, Virginia Department of Taxation, BlueCross BlueShield of Arizona, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and Dow Jones & Company.

IBM has been actively strengthening its foothold in the healthcare industry both through partnerships and acquisitions and this buy could only help Big Blue boost its offerings. I can imagine that healthcare companies, including insurance companies and hospitals, make up a big part of Datacap’s customer base.

This year alone, Big Blue has acquired Big Fix, Coremetrics, Sterling Commerce, Cast Iron Systems, Initiate and Intelliden.

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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.

Box.net’s co-founder Aaron Levie says that the startup is investing heavily in its mobile strategy for a number of reasons. First, the workplace is no longer only working only in the office; increasingly business tasks are being performed on mobile devices. And Levie says that competitors like Microsoft Sharepoint don’t have strong mobile offerings, so this is an opportunity to take charge of an open market.

So far, Box’s iPhone and iPad apps have seen 150K downloads. Up next, says Levie, are Android and Blackberry apps. Levie says in particular the Android app has been optimized for search within content systems.

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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.

Currently over 1,000 brands are using Imaginatik for in-house idea management, including Boeing, IBM, Merck and Nokia. The company just raised $2.6 million in funding last year. Imaginatik faces competition from Salesforce and others.

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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 analytics of daily, weekly and monthly operating costs for computing.

The management console also includes support for both public and private virtual local area networks, which aims to allow enterprises to create their own virtual private cloud. Skydera integrated distinct features provided by Amazon, Rackspace, GoGrid, and Slicehost cloud environments, as well as the ability to manage private clouds.

Skydera believes that it can compete with other cloud management platforms because it offers a vertically integrated platform; bringing command, control, provisioning and monitoring an easy to use, single interface. Skydera also promises a cost-effective, “pay-as-you-go” pricing model for SMBs, and annual licensing contracts for Enterprise customers. Skydera faces competition from Cloudkick, Makara, RightScale and rPath.

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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.

Users also don’t need to develop their software around specific platform APIs; users can use their existing data stores in conjunction with PiCloud, whether their data is on Rackspace, Amazon Web Services, or in their private datacenter.

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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.

Joyent, which just raised an undisclosed round of funding from Intel Capital, counts some noteworthy companies among its customers, including social network LinkedIn, social gaming platform operator Watercooler and clothing and flash sales giant Gilt Groupe. The company used to provide hosting to Twitter.

Layerboom raised $200,000 from Canadian startup accelerator Bootup Labs.

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Morph Labs offers a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that virtualizes the application environment through the use of open source technologies. The startup offers a private cloud appliance, mCloud Controller, which helps clients with provisioning, billing and virtual machine management.

The funding will be used to accelerate expansion in the United States and Asia.

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

The company’s president Ed Boyajian tells me that EnterpriseDB will use the funding to expand the distribution of PostGres.

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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.

With the new application, users have several ways to tell the team what and where the bugs are. These notifications can be conveyed via messages, screenshots, videos and more to help the developers fix the issue. Users can also indicate the source of a big within a software module and assign the bug to a particular developer in the project.

Users can also define rules that will enable them to organize the bugs and perform actions such as changing the severity, priority, module and assigning the issue to developer when there is a change in the bug status. The interface includes a Bugs list, which gives project leads a view of the bugs that have been recently opened, and offers filtering options (by status, owner, severity, etc). In addition, the list shows what changes each bug has gone through, by whom and when.

Zoho is offering the bug tracing module along with Zoho Projects (plus Wiki and Group Chat) for an annual price of $60 with regular pricing for Zoho Projects starting at $12 per month.

While Zoho faces stiff competition from enormously popular project management application Basecamp, the startup has been trying to spruce up its offering over the past year. Last fall, Zoho added Google Apps integration and launched a Project app in the Google Apps Marketplace earlier this year.

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