Dell seeks storage provider

Dell is in exclusive talks to buy data storage provider Compellent Technologies in a deal valued at about $900 million, an 18% discount to the company's recent market value, reports The Wall Street Journal.

A purchase of Compellent would mark the latest merger in the data storage sector, which has been growing quickly on soaring demand for efficient ways to store and access mounting amounts of documents and media.

Investors have been waiting for Dell's response to losing in September a high-profile bidding war with HP for another data storage provider, 3Par, the report says. Compellent had long been mentioned as a potential target, causing shares to triple since August and eventually leading to the below-market offer.

Memory giant Kingston Technology claims the growing popularity of tablet PCs could open up opportunities for the storage channel next year, states Channel Web.

According to a forecast by research firm Gartner, 80% of businesses will be using tablet devices by 2013.

John Tu, president of Kingston Technology, says lack of storage was one of the biggest drawbacks of tablet PCs for end users: "This will lead to opportunities in 2011, where Flash-based products have huge potential to be used as added, external storage for these gadgets.”

Quickoffice has released an update for its iPad app, which provides support for Huddle and SugarSync cloud storage services, says V3.co.uk.

Huddle is a file storage, project management and collaboration tool, while SugarSync is an online backup, file sync and sharing service that allows users to access documents from any location.

The ability to search the iPad's local drive and cloud storage programs for file names has also been incorporated. This is likely to save business users from searching through hundreds or thousands of files when on the move, the report says.