"In terms of the overall solution for BI, there is much more to be gained in terms of overall revenue from services," he said. "Generally speaking, for every BI project, services are the most expensive because expertise is in short supply."

HP announced earlier this month that it had acquired Knightsbridge Solutions Holding Corp., a BI and data warehouse services company.

This is not the first foray into BI for HP chairman and CEO Mark Hurd, who came to HP from NCR Corp., which under his watch operated data warehousing vendor Teradata. NCR announced plans last week to spin off Teradata as an independent entity.