The bidding for 3PAR now stands at $30 a share. That's like two billion bucks, pushing passed what appeared to be hysterical speculation about how far into the clouds the offers could go just days ago.

Dell this morning rolled out of bed and matched HP's price late yesterday of $27 a share, $1.8 billion. HP immediately countered with $30 returning the puck to Dell, which thought it had the apparently priceless storage operation in the bag a week ago Monday at only 18 bucks a share until HP upset the apple cart Monday with a surprise bid of $24 a share on Monday. Dell Thursday morning sweetened HP's $24 offer by 30 cents and HP then went to $27.

Wall Street is betting the price will go higher still and had boosted 3PAR's stock price to $3.68 mid-morning Friday.

Shortly before noon New York time Dell indicated it was taking a breather to consider "what was best for its stockholders." It has three days to respond to HP's higher bid and the talking heads on CNBC didn't expect it to make a move or retire the field before then.

3PAR is prized as cloud storage. Of course a lot of people think it's being overvalued. It does about $200 million in sales a year and isn't profitable. It was trading at $9.65 on August 13, a mere two weeks ago.