$700m deal ties Philips to Dell

Dell will supply PCs, managed services and application packaging services to Philips Electronics worldwide, the two companies said on Thursday.

Under the deal, Philips will purchase OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Precision workstations. The services contract covers about 75,000 employees in 60 countries. The five-year contract is worth $700m.

Dell said the standardisation at Philips locations is designed to connect workers in a virtual global workplace in a cost-effective manner.

Joe Marengi, general manager of Dell Americas, said in a statement: "The quality of Dell's managed service offering will help improve productivity for Philips, giving it the freedom to concentrate on its core business, Standardising on Dell hardware and services will help Philips provide a better customer experience for its employees and save the company money."

Dell and rivals such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun have been pushing customers to buy bundled hardware, software and services, asserting that this approach can cut operational costs and improve efficiency. Dell, along with Microsoft, recently won a network maintenance and software contract from the US Air Force.

Dinesh C. Sharma writes for CNET News.com.