Dell and HP have once again traded bids as they tussle over storage outfit 3PAR. On Friday morning, Dell matched HP's Thursday bid of $27 a share, and HP promptly re-upped the ante with a $30 a share bid, valuing 3PAR at $2 billion.

Meanwhile, shares in the Fremont, California-based 3PAR jumped to $32.46, a more than 235 per cent increase since Dell and HP began their bidding war last week.

At a press event in San Francisco on Friday, Dell vp of enterprise storage and networking Praveen Asthana was asked why his company was so determined to buying the relatively small 3PAR. "If you look at multi-tenancy cloud services, 3PAR is uniquely qualified in providing that kind of storage technology right now," Asthana said. 3PAR offers high-automated and virtualized enterprise storage arrays.

When it was pointed out that other outfits offer tools similar to 3PAR – Compellent being one – Asthana said that 3PAR is that few such companies are "available." Asked what he meant – i.e. what outfits were available – he remained silent.

Shares in Compellent were up more than 15 per cent on Friday.

Asthana would not comment on how Dell plans to respond to HP's latest bid. ®