HP is buying consultancy EYP Mission Critical Facilities Inc, which specialises in designing big data centres.

The company has 350 staff in the US and UK and has clients in finance, telecoms, manufacturing, and healthcare.

EYP specialises in energy efficiency - a hot topic as vendors try to paint themselves green.

Financial terms were not disclosed and are subject to the usual regulatory conditions.

Speaking at Oracle OpenWorld yesterday, HP's chief exec Mark Hurd said market consolidation and vertical integration was likely to not just continue but accelerate. He said HP remained focused on servers, storage, and the software to manage them.

Hurd said: "In the end, maths wins... only a handful of companies have more than $100bn in cash."

Hurd said another driver for consolidation was customers' desire to deal with fewer suppliers. ®