Hurd insisted during a conference call Tuesday that EDS would resist such an obvious temptation and remain hardware-agnostic.

This scenario is believable, Lovetere suggested.

"EDS is still a stand-alone business with a core group of customers and a core group of relationships," Lovetere said. "Trying to force customers onto platforms they don't have comfort level with doesn't make good business sense."

The acquisition will benefit both companies in the long run, said Rick Morris, chief information officer of Dollar Thrifty Automotive, which signed a five-year IT services contract with EDS worth $150 million to manage application development, network, and hardware management.

"I would be more worried if they were merging with a lesser-known commodity than HP," Morris said.

With HP being a products company and much of EDS' revenue coming from infrastructure outsourcing, the acquisition is a natural way to try to expand in the services business, he said.

The combined company could lower Dollar Thrifty's IT operation cost by bringing in HP's product culture and more scale, Morris said, adding that HP could also reinforce and enable EDS' strategy to make business applications for the travel and transport industry.

Yet, there are concerns. EDS has a big focus on the travel and transportation industry, and Morris questioned whether HP would retain that vertical focus. Questions also remain about HP's ability to effectively integrate EDS' operation and culture, Morris said.

"The HP-Compaq merger seemed pretty messy; the major thought would be, would they execute this better," Morris said. HP's acquisition of Compaq for $25 billion in 2001 was considered a failure, as the company didn't generate hardware profits as a result. Former CEO Carly Fiorina, who oversaw HP's buy of Compaq, was replaced by Hurd.

While the deal could present issues for some vertical markets, it could translate to better IT integration for health care organizations, said Elizabeth Messina, CIO of Blue Cross Blue Shield Arizona. Blue Cross already uses HP hardware and recently renewed a contract with EDS for claims-processing hosting in March.

Blue Cross has been an EDS customer for 15 years and the acquisition could allow HP to expand its offerings, Messina said.

"This allows [HP] to come forward with hardware solutions with services to provide at competitive prices," Messina said.

The EDS deal could overall catapult HP near the top of a space worth $748 billion in 2007, according to recent figures from Gartner.

IBM led the market with about $54 billion in revenue, followed by EDS with $22 billion. HP was in fifth place with revenue of $17 billion, behind Accenture and Fujitsu.

(Peter Sayer in Paris contributed to this report.)

This story was updated May 13, 2008.