HP just got a piece of Microsoft's Surface business, too

HP will be selling Microsoft's Surface PCs to businesses beginning in October, the companies have confirmed to Business Insider.

On Tuesday, Microsoft made a big splashy announcement with Dell for the same deal.

That means that Microsoft has now lined up the two biggest PC makers, and their enormous armies of enterpries sales folks, to represent the Surface.

Both Dell and HP make their own high-end, profitable Windows 10 machines, and they want to keep selling them. So we'll see how big an impact this will have on the sales of the Microsoft device. It will likely help Microsoft but won't turn Microsoft into an epic PC maker in HP's or Dell's league.

More importantly, this represents an olive branch by the kinder, friendlier administration of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella administration to Microsoft's PC partners who were stunned when former CEO Steve Ballmer opted to compete with them.

Microsoft needs them happy. It is about to release the enterpries versions of Windows 10 later this month and it needs businesses to love it so much, they want to upgrade their old Windows 7 machines to fancy new touch-friendly Windows 10 PCs. Microsoft wants to have 1 billion Windows 10 devices in the world within the next two to three years, its execs have said. It can't do that without winning the hearts of its biggest crop of users, businesses, and the kingpins of the PC industry.