SAN JOSE, Calif. — Buying a once-struggling tech-services company for nearly $14 billion may be Mark Hurd’s biggest gamble since taking the helm at Hewlett-Packard in 2005, but he sounded supremely confident Tuesday.

“We think this thing has got tremendous opportunities,” Hurd told Wall Street analysts. Buying Electronic Data Systems will make HP a “leading force” in a market now dominated by IBM, he said. “We have got work to do, but we feel like we can have a pretty damn attractive business here.”

HP’s stock price dropped again for the second day since word of the acquisition surfaced, as some analysts questioned whether HP is paying too much or whether EDS’s slower growth will weigh HP down.

But others noted Hurd’s success in turning around his own company — overcoming controversy over an earlier acquisition, while cutting costs and improving efficiency as HP surpassed its competitors to become the world’s biggest seller of personal computers.

Stock analyst Brent Bracelin of Pacific Crest Securities summed up the reaction: “Three years from now, we may be able to look back and say, ‘What a great move Hurd made.’ But six months from now, we may look back and say, ‘Ugh, why did he do that?’”

What Hurd is doing is seeking growth outside the company’s traditional domain of business and consumer hardware, by buying the world’s second-largest provider of business technology services. EDS provides advice to commercial and government clients, designs their computer systems or other back-office functions, and even operates those systems on contract.

HP has been trying to sell more consulting and technical services in recent years. Now, if Hurd can overcome the business and cultural challenges of integrating the Texas-based EDS into HP’s Palo Alto, Calif.-based universe, industry experts say HP could become a major competitor in an extremely lucrative arena.

“Hurd has been the integrator par excellence,” said analyst Peter Bendor-Samuel, referring to HP’s successful assimilation of PC-maker Compaq.

Acquiring EDS is “probably the only way” for HP to move into second place in the fast-growing business-services market, added Bendor-Samuel, CEO of a technology-outsourcing research firm called Everest Group.

“There is a lot of work to be done at EDS,” said Wall Street analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research. But, she added: “That tends to be Mark Hurd’s modus operandi: fixing businesses.”