Thanks Mark: Microsoft Corp. signed a contract in June with Hewlett-Packard Co. to provide technical support for 61,000 Microsoft employees in the use of the software maker's internal computer systems, the two companies said yesterday. Joe Hogan, Hewlett-Packard Services marketing vice president, wouldn't disclose the value or duration of the contract, which, he said, won't result in any HP employees coming to or leaving Seattle. Hewlett-Packard won the contract in a competition with Siemens Business Services Inc. of Redmond. HP won because it charged Microsoft less, said Joel Fleming, Siemens' senior director of services, in early April when the decision was made.
About 300 Eastside Siemens workers were faced with layoffs because of the lost contract. Siemens didn't return repeated phone calls yesterday seeking information on possible layoffs. Hogan said the contract wasn't disclosed until now because the companies "wanted to be comfortable with how we were releasing this information to the public."
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