IDG News Service — The bidding war for storage vendor 3PAR continued to escalate Friday, with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) submitting a new offer of US$30 per share, or $2 billion. The offer topped a $27 per share bid made by Dell (DELL) earlier in the day.

HP's board has approved the offer, but 3PAR's has not yet done so, according to an HP statement. 3PAR's board has accepted Dell's $27 per share bid, but the vendor would have to pay Dell a $72 million termination fee if it accepts a superior offer.

3PAR is known for its "thin provisioning" technology, which allows storage resources to be provided on demand. It differs from traditional "fat provisioning," which allocates an excess amount of storage to an application in anticipation of future needs. Thin provisioning is much more efficient than the latter approach, which leads to underutilization of resources, advocates say.

Both HP and Dell see 3PAR's products as a key asset for building cloud computing environments.

The competition for 3PAR has been intense since Dell's initial offer of $1.15 billion on Aug. 16. Analysts have chalked this up to the fact that there are few alternative, comparable acquisition targets.

Dell and 3Par could not immediately be reached for comment on HP's announcement.