Hewlett-Packard has raised its offer for virtualized storage vendor 3PAR to US$33 per share, or roughly $2.4 billion, from its previous bid of $30 per share, 3PAR said Thursday. The move tops Dell's latest offer of $32 per share, according to 3PAR.

Despite the confusion surrounding what cloud storage really means and how it might be used, few advances in storage have been hyped as much as "cloud storage." Understandably, IT professionals are intrigued by the prospect of reducing their reliance on internal capabilities, eliminating capital spending, and improving the overall cost structure of specific parts of their storage environment by moving workloads to the cloud. At the same time, every vendor in the space is painting its products and message with a cloud veneer. To cut through the hype, Forrester defines cloud storage as:

Scientists at Rice University have been able to create a non-volitile memory using a chain of nano-sized silicon crystals that can be stacked atop one another to create 3-D memory that offers far great scale than today's flash memory.

I/O virtualization vendor Xsigo Systems is tapping into the most ubiquitous network connections around, offering an appliance that lets enterprises carve many virtual links out of the Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gigabit Ethernet port built into a server.