Playing IBM's game - Competitors rally against Big Blue's dominance on the services court.(Company Business and Marketing)

IBM HAS LED THE FIELD in IT services since the punch-card era, and considering Big Blue's plan to invest $10 billion in on-demand utility offerings, on top of its recent purchase of PWC Consulting, the company appears poised to retain this supremacy for a long time to come. How are IBM's competitors addressing the challenge?

Hewlett-Packard, the only systems company with the breadth and depth to tackle IBM in services, is struggling to craft an identity and culture in the wake of its merger. Sun's services offerings are not very cross- platform. And Dell, a comer in the enterprise space generally, is still trying to branch out from desktop support.

We talked with the executives running the respective services businesses at HP, Dell, and Sun to get their take on the services landscape. At the crux of their comments lie several ideological questions about customer preferences. Among them are: Do enterprises want to outsource entire chunks of their IT infrastructure to external utilities, or do they value control over cost savings? Do they want heterogeneous technology environments, or do they feel indifferent as to whose software is under the hood?

HP: No. 1 contender

HP is the only contender …