IBM has won a long-term contract from Honeywell worth several hundred million dollars, its largest military-aerospace engineering contract since IBM exited the field a decade ago, it said Monday.
The agreement between Big Blue"s Engineering & Technology Services unit and Honeywell"s military aerospace business covers electronics for aircraft, munitions, space and surface vehicles, the companies said in a statement. The deal is designed to speed development of network-based battlefield gear, they said. Under the agreement, Honeywell gains access to IBM engineering expertise, technologies, research and advanced electronics manufacturing capacity.
"Companies that are very proud of their engineering competence are looking to IBM" for electronic design services, Robert Blackburn, IBM"s vice president of military and aerospace engineering, said in a phone interview last week. "Honeywell has outsourced their digital engineering function to IBM," Blackburn said. "This deal is not contingent on one program. It is to provide our information technology throughout their network(ed) product line."