After acquiring long-time HP 3000 higher-education software vendor Software Research Northwest (SRN) last month, SunGard’s Data Services unit is challenging HP’s bid to beef up the Hewlett-Packard services business. SunGard has acquired 90 companies in the last 15 years to grow to more than $1 billion in sales, and now it wants to own Comdisco’s services unit, just as HP does. The two bidders could hardly be more different in size — HP’s last fiscal year finished at $48 billion in sales to SunGard’s $1.6 billion. But SunGard appears to value the services business at Comdisco even more than HP. It topped HP’s offer of $610 million for the Chapter 13 bankrupt Comdisco with a $775 million bid.

The challenge shows how serious the industry’s hardware vendors are taking the march to services, the promised land which HP CEO Carly Fiorina is leading the company toward. HP’s not alone among hardware vendors who want their mix of its revenues to reflect more services money. Compaq, which several years ago swallowed up Digital’s server business, just announced that it wants its services business to account for 30 percent of total revenues. HP’s latest quarter showed about 16 percent of services revenues, still well behind its hardware sales. Both Compaq and HP have said they want their sales mix to look more like that at IBM, the leader in the services field. The computer services segment is growing faster and offers higher profits than selling hardware and software, but “It’s very attractive to go into, but it’s very labor-intensive to pull off,” said an official from a company that offers HP e3000 services. If you put together a great services organization, it’s really a great engine, and the customers get their needs met.” The potential profits will make the business of hardware and operating systems a tougher sell inside HP for new investments or a harder sales push. HP could use the push. It ranks third behind Sun and IBM in total revenues from server sales, and fourth behind Sun, IBM, and Compaq in unit shipments.