Dell, Philips cut $700 million deal

Dell will supply PCs, managed services and application packaging services to Philips Electronics worldwide, the two companies said 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 $700 million.

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

"The quality of Dell's managed service offering will help improve productivity for Philips, giving it the freedom to concentrate on its core business," Joe Marengi, general manager of Dell Americas, said in a statement.

"Standardizing 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 Microsystems 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 .S. Air Force.