The question is whether an acquisition of E.D.S. would give Hewlett-Packard the inside track it is looking for in competing against I.B.M. and other rivals. And the answer on Monday from Wall Street analysts was a decidedly mixed one. Hewlett-Packard’s stock price seemed to reflect the uncertainty, falling after news of a potential deal began to circulate. The stock closed the day at $46.83, down nearly 5 percent.

Shares of E.D.S. closed at $24.13, up 28 percent from Friday’s close.

“It’s a very significant combination,” said Ben Pring, a research vice president in the IT Practices Group at Gartner. But “people who are skeptical of big integrations will have a field day around this,” he said. “It’s putting together two large businesses with two different heritages. It’s going to be a big culture clash.”

E.D.S. has a storied past. Founded in 1962 by Ross Perot, it pioneered the outsourcing of data management as well as the management of entire data centers. In 1984, he sold the company to General Motors, but it was a rocky relationship and he left the company two years later. G.M. spun off E.D.S. in 1996.

E.D.S., based in Plano, Tex., is familiar and comfortable with acquiring and integrating new operations because that is its business. Hewlett-Packard successfully integrated Compaq and has reorganized its core businesses to cut costs and provide cash for growing businesses. Business services had been a laggard division for H.P., but Ann M. Livermore, the executive vice president responsible for what the company calls its Technology Solutions Group, has made it profitable and grow as fast as the rest of the company.

H.P. has acquired a string of enterprise software companies including Mercury Interactive, Opsware and Neoware, in recent years. (H.P. considered several years ago purchasing P.W.C., a major consulting firm, only to lose it to I.B.M.)

But the size of the proposed merger with E.D.S. would pose more daunting challenges. E.D.S. has 140,000 employees, to H.P.’s 172,000. About two-thirds of the E.D.S. employees are located in the United States, which means Hewlett-Packard would be buying a relatively expensive workforce compared to the fast-growing lower-cost competition based overseas, said A.M. Sacconaghi Jr., an industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.