HP’s acquisition of EDS – so it can challenge IBM – will leave 24,600 people looking for new jobs, most of them EDS folks.

The cuts won’t come all at once. The exercise will take three years to complete, HP said, expecting to use the layoffs to upgrade the skills of its workforce by hiring roughly 12,000 new people, particularly sales reps, according to HP CEO Mark Hurd, “to optimize its global footprint.”

Half the cuts will be in the US and HP said it expects half the terminations to be made by next November.

Together HP and EDS have a total workforce of 325,000 – 178,000 from HP and 142,000 from EDS. That means it intends to make 7.5% of the total population redundant. HP promised severance packages, counseling and job placement services.

Once everybody is fired, HP expects to save $1.8 billion a year. Meantime, it intends to take a $1.7 billion charge this quarter, $1.4 billion attributed to goodwill, $300 million recorded as a restructuring charge.

During a conference call with analysts, Hurd said HP “isn’t working on any big acquisition this second,” emphasizing “this second.” HP’s focus is currently on integrating EDS and standardizing its service offerings as much as possible.

According to CFO Cathie Lesjak, the EDS acquisition will cost HP 17 cents-19 cents a share (GAAP) this quarter and six cents-11 cents in fiscal ’09 with the numbers turning positive in fiscal ’10, a projection of 38 cents-42 cents (non-GAAP) or 11 cents-16 cents (GAAP) to the good on an EDS revenue impact of $21.7 billion $22.1 billion.

With EDS, HP is now a $135 billion a year company, with the two reportedly having only limited customer overlap and what it calculates as a $451 billion – as in billion – enterprise opportunity in 2010, $370 billion in services. HP reckons it will realize a 4%- 6% CAGR from 2008-2010.