US aerospace company's defence customers to benefit from 10-year, $250 million strategic partnership
Honeywell has signed a 10-year agreement with IBM that gives the aerospace company access to the electronics giant's commercial technologies for use in defence and space programmes.
Under the agreement, worth $250 million over 10 years, Honeywell's defence and space business will get early access to technology developments in IBM's PowerPC architecture and electronics design capability, says Ed Wheeler, vice-president and general manager, Honeywell Defense & Space Electronics Systems.
Wheeler says the deal will enable Honeywell to offer military customers commercial solutions to problems such as avionics obsolescence and will accelerate design and development of network-centric capabilities for aircraft, munitions and space and ground vehicles.
Under the agreement IBM will also take over some of Honeywell's digital electronics design, particularly for processing, memory, high-speed input/output and communications, says Wheeler. "Honeywell will continue to have a design capability, but for embedded computing we will probably turn that over to IBM," he says.
Honeywell will also keep its design capability for graphics drivers and radiation-hardened electronics, Wheeler says, but the company plans to "carve out" pieces of the design task to be performed by IBM's Engineering & Technology Services unit. He says design could become more collaborative.
IBM left the defence market in the early 1990s when it sold its Federal Systems business to Loral, the unit going on to become Lockheed Martin Systems Integration. In September, Boeing and IBM announced a 10-year alliance to develop digital communications and information technologies for US network-centric defence and intelligence systems. L-3 Communications signed a five-year, $80 million engineering and technology services agreement with IBM in March. In August 2003, Raytheon formed a similar strategic relationship with IBM covering chip design, software development, system architecture and network integration for aerospace and defence.
GRAHAM WARWICK / WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
