In a span of less than an hour this morning, stories have been updated reporting that Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert)Co., the California-based technology giant, will 'invest $1 billion to automate its data centers and eliminate 9,000 jobs over a 'multiyear' period,' says Jeffry Bartash of MarketWatch.com.

Even though it will cost them $1 billion, HP could save up to $700 million once the process is complete; sometime around 2013.

Previous reports indicated that the company would only be cutting 3,000 jobs - still, no small number.

Its data centers are crucial to its performance, especially if it wants to compete with International Business Machines Corp., according to Businessweek.com's Hugo Miller.

The centers are used to house computerized information of various companies, agencies and businesses, and HP plans to move on towards fully automated data centers.

Kelly McGuire, an editor at TMCnet.com, has shed light on an innovative idea for HP so they can forgo their job cuts (and possibly the bulk of their spending). It's so clever that they might as well have come up with it themselves…

A report by our very own HP says that a dairy farmer can 'rent out land and power to technology companies and recoup an investment in the waste-to-fuel systems within two years.'

It continues to state that 'for companies looking to build data centers to balance this growth, the need for a 'green' center has spurred a new wave of buildings close to locations of dairy farms.'

According to HP's calculations, 10,000 cows could fuel a one-megawatt data center, which would be the equivalent of a small computing center used by a bank, says McGuire.

At this point, it is probably easier said than done for HP, but who's to say what 2011 will bring? The jobs could be spared due to the new openings for farmers and ranch hands. You never know, but this sudden announcement has got to have some execs thinking up some crazy ideas to save these jobs.

The job cuts stemmed from when the company raised its forecast for 2010 last month for the third time in a row since November. Since the recession hit, HP has been looking into breaking into more profitable services due to their lack of funds for new computer equipment, according to Businessweek.com.

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Edited by Michael Dinan