EDS was acquired by HP in 2008 for $13.9 billion.

In June, HP announced its enterprise services business. That plan includes the elimination of 8,000 positions.

Those layoffs are part of a plan to by HP to cut its overall workforce by 27,000, or 8%, by 2014. It is not known whether there is any connection between HP's services business cuts and GM's decision to insource the IT work.

Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT, doesn't believe that the cuts in HP's services division can be pegged to any specific customer action. against its services division "suggests that there were more fundamental, systemic issues at play rather the issue of losing one, large lucrative client," he said.

King sees Mott as someone with the experience and inclination to restructure GM's IT operations. He noted that HP's decision to consolidate some 85 data centers into six was made in 2006, not long after Mott was hired as CIO.