HP today confirmed yesterday's report that it plans to split itself into two companies, one for PCs and printers and another for business technology and services. HP also said its layoffs, which are already in full swing, will affect 55,000 people by the time they're done. For comparison's sake, Google's entire employee base is 47,756.

HP had 317,000 employees as of October 2013. The company got rid of 36,000 people by July of this year. HP was planning total "employee reductions" of 45,000 to 50,000 people, but it will now push that to 55,000 "to fund investment opportunities in R&D and sales," the company said in a presentation for investors today.

HP plans to break into two by the end of October 2015. One of the new, separate companies will be Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, focusing on "servers, storage, networking, converged systems, services and software as well as its OpenStack Helion cloud platform," HP said. HP CEO Meg Whitman will be CEO of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.

HP's personal systems and printing businesses will become HP Inc. and have "a strong roadmap into the most exciting new technologies like 3D printing and new computing experiences," HP said. Dion Weisler, executive VP of the printing and personal systems division, will be HP Inc. CEO. Whitman will chair the HP Inc. board.

Based on current financials, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise would have $58.5 billion in revenue and operating profit of $6 billion. HP Inc. would have $57.2 billion in revenue and $5.4 billion in operating profit.

Previous HP CEO Leo Apotheker planned to spin out HP's PC division in 2011, but the plan was shelved and he was replaced by Whitman.

"After three years of work, we are now in a position of strength," HP's presentation said, explaining why "now is the right time" for the split. HP said that after the breakup, "partners and customers will have simpler and more nimble organizations with which to conduct business." The two companies will allegedly be "faster to respond to changing customer requirements and market dynamics."