NetApp can't beat what EMC is offering for Data Domain. The company said on Wednesday it will not revise its proposal to purchase Data Domain to outdo EMC's new uprated bid.

Data Domain said it coughed up a $57m termination fee to NetApp under the terms of its previous merger agreement, ending a six-week bidding war over the data deduplication specialist.

EMC's winning all-cash bid of $33.50/share values Data Domain at about $2.1bn.

The Data Domain board had previously rejected EMC's unsolicited all-cash $30/share offer in favor of an equally-priced bid from NetApp in both cash and stock. Both companies wanted to assimilate Data Domain's market-leading dedupe storage array products into their own offerings.

NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven said in a statement that while buying Data Domain would have produced benefits for customers and employees, the company is "highly confident" in its existing competitive strengths.

"NetApp applies a disciplined approach to acquisitions, one focused intently on creating long-term value for our stockholders," he said. "We therefore cannot justify engaging in an increasingly expensive and dilutive bidding war that would diminish the deal's strategic and financial benefits."

In other words, it's not worth going hungry just to say you beat EMC.

Data Domain's board of directors said they've unanimously agreed to a merger with EMC and said the terms are in the best interest of Data Domain and its stockholders. ®

Related stories

• Data Domain soups up products (20 October 2009)
• Exagrid slides out smoothly scalable Data Domain beater (13 October 2009)
• EMC offers cascading replication (23 September 2009)
• EMC quadruples investments in India (9 September 2009)
• Georgens bags top NetApp job (20 August 2009)
• Comment NetApp turns onto ONTAP cloud storage (5 August 2009)
• EMC could be seeing bottom of the recession (23 July 2009)
• EMC dishes what it will do with Data Domain (20 July 2009)
• Data Domain doubles up dedupe speed (20 July 2009)
• Sun setting dedupe up for ZFS (13 July 2009)
• Comment What happens to Dell's deduplication now? (13 July 2009)
• Comment EMC plus Data Domain equals what exactly? (9 July 2009)
• Comment NetApp ponders getting off the pot, or... (7 July 2009)
• EMC whacks up Data Domain bid (6 July 2009)
• EMC forced to extend Data Domain offer (29 June 2009)
• Data Domain sued over NetApp takeover (17 June 2009)
• Data Domain to EMC: What part of 'no' do you not get? (15 June 2009)
• EMC could dig deeper for Data Domain (15 June 2009)
• EMC sends love letter to Data Domain (9 June 2009)
• Data Domain promises EMC response (4 June 2009)
• Data Domain shareholders to judge beauty contest (3 June 2009)
• Comment Data Domain bid war: Could NetApp go higher? (3 June 2009)