Storage specialist NetApp has upped its offer for deduplication vendor Data Domain by over 20% in response to an EMC bid.
It is now bidding $1.9 billion in cash and stock, or $30 per share, up from its original offer of $25.
EMC earlier this week offered $1.8 billion in cash for the firm.
NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven said his company's portfolio was a closer fit for Data Domain. “The complementary nature of the [two] product lines will result in higher aggregate growth compared to the redundancies that would result with the EMC product line,” he said.
“We firmly believe that the combination of our two companies will provide a greater opportunity and risk-adjusted value for Data Domain shareholders.”
An increasingly hot commodity in the IT industry, data deduplication is the practice of storing only new files during backup, increasing speed and freeing up storage space.
NetApp’s stock on Nasdaq fell nearly 4% to $18.57 following the announcement.
