But Allen said the deal may make sense if acquiring EDS will put it in a better position to offer cloud-type computing services, as part of the broader user shift to service providers. "Is this part of a vision of how corporations will procure computing resources?"

HP already has a significant services operation, which generated about $16.6 billion last year, said Stan Lepeak, a managing director at EquaTerra, a Houston-based consulting firm. EDS has been expanding in human resources business process outsourcing, something HP is doing as well. "I think they (EDS) have a pretty broad range of offerings that tie closely to the HP product set," he said.

For HP there has always been a little bit of an underdog status with IBM because of it services organization. And while competitors may knock IBM services as organization intent on selling its hardware, Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT in Hayward, Calif, said "the fact is that IBM doesn't hold a gun to anyone's head."

"As datacenters become increasingly complex and increasingly distributed, they become harder and harder for businesses to get a handle on them," said King. This will make services such what HP can offer with EDS more appealing. It will also allow HP to "compete more effectively with IBM -- IBM is the company they are gunning for," he said.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.