Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) on Friday raised its offer to buy 3PAR Inc. to about 2 billion U.S. dollars, topping rival Dell Inc. for the third time in the bid for the data storage company.

HP said it is now willing to acquire all of the outstanding shares of 3PAR at 30 dollars per share, hours after Dell announced that 3PAR has accepted its increased offer of 27 dollars per share that matched the previous bid made by HP on Thursday.

Dell first signed an agreement to purchase 3PAR for 18 dollars per share, but HP then countered with a higher offer of 24 dollars per share.

Dell slightly sweetened its bid to 24.3 dollars per share on Thursday, which was trumped again by HP with the offer of 27 dollars per share.

The public bidding war between HP and Dell came as the two personal computer giants are striving to diversify their business and push into enterprise data center as well as other more profitable markets.

3PAR is a provider of highly-virtualized storage solutions called "utility storage", designed to be the storage foundation for utility computing that enables information technology organizations to deliver software and hardware as a service through server and storage virtualization.