When Hewlett-Packard's board of directors selected former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker as its new leader to replace Mark Hurd in September 2010, they purposely picked a software guy to transform a longtime hardware maker into the 21st century IT world.

So it shouldn't come as much of surprise that HP has been buying software companies (Vertica and Fortify) since Apotheker came aboard.

The latest news will be announced this afternoon on the HP earnings call, we're told, and it will be about buying a big international fish, U.K.-based e-discovery and storage provider (among many other things) Autonomy. That HP will part with $10 billion of its hard-earned dollars in the deal is what we've also heard from reliable sources.

It will be the largest HP acquisition since the $13.9 billion purchase of EDS in May 2008.

We will have a lot more to report on this deal later today and for weeks to come. Just wanted to get something posted now. That is all for now.