The unheralded services arm at Dell has secured a major win by inking a five-year-deal with Boeing to manage the company's PCs.

Dell is to take charge of the notebooks, desktops and workstations for Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) business unit. The agreement covers a host of services, including software distribution, hardware installation and maintenance and overall asset management. Dell will be the primary care giver at Boeing's St. Louis, Missouri site and sites in El Segundo, Long Beach, Huntington Beach and Seal Beach, California.

The deal with Boeing is no surprise. Dell seems to have an annual Boeing win in which a few more locations are added on the "to be serviced" list.

Boeing is the type of massive client that HP or IBM would love to have, but Dell seems to have secured the account for the foreseeable future

Along with PC hardware, Boeing has also purchased a large amount of enterprise kit from Dell in the past. Boeing uses Dell servers and storage and has a high performance computer cluster made of Dell systems that is ranked 123 on the top 500 supercomputer list.

There is also an interesting article on the Boeing Center for Technology's Web site that debates Dell's role as an anti-technology company. ®