I have to give the HP board the benefit of the doubt that when they hired the new CEO they knew he'd steer them in this direction. He used to work at SaS so his expertise is software services. He must have told them in the recruitment/appointment process that he'd give some things a shot (webOS, TouchPad etc.) and failing that, he'd steer them towards services and become more like IBM.

I made a lot of assumptions, but again, giving people benefit of the doubt.