Hewlett-Packard's decision today not to spin off its PC manufacturing business bodes well for Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 tablets.

Earlier this year, HP famously announced that it was killing its HP TouchPad tablet, running on the WebOS operating system, as well as considering spinning off its PC business.

Today, new CEO Meg Whitman announced HP was keeping its PC unit, and in a conference call, said the company planned to take advantage of the increasing numbers of workers wanting to bring in and use their own devices for work.

"How do you control personal devices and security? We want to have products highly desirable by consumers and the CIO," she said during the conference call, according to ZDNet.

A key to that is tablets. As noted by ZDNet, Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP's Personal Systems group, said: "I think the work we're doing with Microsoft is extraordinarily compelling."

Besides mentioning more work with Windows 8 and trying to meet the challenge of bringing personal devices to the workplace, HP executives weren't any more specific on products, the ZDNet article says.