In a Monday announcement, Dell disclosed that it is working out a $1.15-billion acquisition of the Fremont, California-based 3PAR – the company that manufactures virtualized data storage systems, which it intends offering to bigger customers.

Noting that the high-end systems made by 3PAR help companies handle their ever-increasing data storage needs by outsourcing that task to a contract provider rather than making use of their own data centers, Brad Anderson, Senior VP of Dell’s Enterprise Product Group, said: “We think 3Par is a fantastic addition to the Dell lineup of storage technologies. We think this is a perfect fit.”

According to a statement by 3PAR, its Utility Storage platform is capable of bringing about a dramatic reduction in administrative, power and space costs over the traditional storage arrangements. No wonder then that the platform is used by is used by 7 of the world’s top-10 grossing managed service providers.

Dell’s acquisition of 3PAR – which is essentially a leader of the industry trend that deals with large Web hosting companies and sophisticated corporate customers like AT&T – fits perfectly with the company’s recent acquisition pattern that give it a richer blend of hardware and services that can appeal to midsize as well as bigwig corporate customers.

The notable storage-related acquisitions by Dell include the late-2007-takeover of EqualLogic Inc.; the February-2010 acquisition of Exanet; and the July-2010 acquisition of Ocarina Networks.