Mark Hurd has built a reputation as one of corporate America's foremost turnround artists with his three-year revival of Hewlett-Packard. Now, it looks like he is about to bite off another tough challenge.

To cement HP’s place as the tech world's biggest company, Mr Hurd, chief executive, was on Monday close to completing an acquisition of a company that was instrumental in creating the modern IT industry. EDS, the brainchild of Texas entrepreneur Ross Perot, likes to boast that it invented the IT outsourcing business, or taking over and running in-house computing operations on behalf of big businesses and government agencies.