According to the New Zealand Business Review, IBM has managed to win the trust of Air New Zealand again, signing a five-year deal for its technology services.

This is despite the airline despite the airline saying IBM caused it "catastrophic" problems last year when its data center went down.

The contract is said to be worth tens of millions of dollars, and IBM had already moved some of its services over to local telecommunications network services provider Gen-i.

Gen-i was said to be looking to take full control of Air New Zealand's data center operations following scathing remarks made to staff last year about IBM's level of service. IBM, under contract, retained work with Air New Zealand, but analysts thought it would lose this once the time-frame was up.

The NBR said it thought Gen-i had pitched for the full contract. IBM, however, pledged to upgrade services in New Zealand with a new data center.

It will now provide new mainframe and virtual hosting services for Air New Zealand under a contact that will start in two years, ensuring its relationship with the airline for seven years in total.