Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker finally brought the  news everybody’s been looking to hear: HP is going after the software market. HP’s core business has always been very much focused on hardware, but even though the company is currently the largest PC maker in the world, its growth rate has been steadily declining. More and more competition is appearing in the low-margin hardware business, and in addition to improving the quality of production, Apotheker intends to drastically enhanced HP’s software offerings – particularly around big data and the cloud.

“The new CEO says he’s likely to buy more companies with software expertise, following HP’s Feb. 14 acquisition of data- analysis company Vertica for an undisclosed price. He said he’s on the lookout for targets that will help HP beef up security and equip customers to analyze large amounts of data.

“I happen to know something about software,” said Apotheker, who spent more than 20 years at SAP, the world’s largest maker of business-application software.”

Apotheker noted his company has “no interest” in buying SAP and Salesforce.com, and – here comes the most notable news – all HP shipped starting next year will include the ability to install WebOS in addition to Windows alone. This is will be directed to developers to build up a more extensive app base than the 6,000 WebOS currently features, and represents a sizable blow (and stab in the metaphorical back) of good ol’ Microsoft.

Evidently, Apotheker already realized the first step of his agenda – CRN reports Hewlett-Packard has launched the latest release of the HP Project and Portfolio Management software into general availability. The software, which offers corporate performance and real-time governance development tools, among other things, is the latest addition to the HP vs. Oracle and IBM (plus Computerware, as well as with its updated PPM offering).  Version 9.1` has been available to existing customers since late last year.

Chief executive Leo Apotheker seems to be all geared up to go head to head with Oracle and IBM, but one analyst, Cowen’s Peter Goldmacher, thinks HP should also take the commodity software approach. Why? Because it has no massive revenue stream (nor industry hold) to lose, and its massive sales channel can handle anything Apotheker could throw at it.