Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) will place its bets on its main data center hardware business to continue driving the bulk of its revenues, once it’s done shedding its Enterprise Server business.

HPE, which only split from its PC and printer business last year (that’s now become HP Inc.), said in its earnings call last month that it’s planning to spin off Enterprise Services and merge it with Computer Sciences Corp. That will leave HPE’s data center hardware business, which includes servers, storage and networking, as well as software to manage it, as its clear breadwinner.

In a new analysis of the performance of HPE’s various businesses over at The Next Platform, Timothy Prickett-Morgan explains that enterprise technology services are a low-margin, people-intensive business, which explains why HPE CEO Meg Whitman decided to get out of it altogether.

HPE’s data center business hasn’t exactly set the world alight as far as growth is concerned – its most recent quarter was mostly flat. Still, the business is the company’s biggest cash cow, generating far more profits than Enterprise Services. HPE’s Infrastructure Technology Outsourcing business, which is also being shed as part of the Enterprise Services unit, was second to servers in terms of revenue generated.

Once the Enterprise Services business is out of the way, Prickett-Morgan concludes that the only real path forward for HPE if it’s to show meaningful revenue growth is to try to sell much higher volumes of commoditized data center hardware. That won’t be easy, because HPE will need to compete on price alone against dozens of no-name Taiwanese and Chinese white box makers.

Throw in the added competition from China’s Lenovo Group Ltd., and the behemoth that Dell Technologies will be and it’s clear that HPE will need to complete this transition as soon as it can.

Driving volume in hardware sales will be HPE’s first line of defense in what is a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive market.

Image credit: HPE