IBM reaches mainframe antitrust deal with EU

(ZDNet UK) By David Meyer

On Wednesday, the European Commission said IBM will now make spare parts and technical information "swiftly available" to independent maintainers of IBM's System z mainframes, under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. These commitments are legally binding, it noted.

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IBM Said to Settle European Union Antitrust Probe Next Week

(Bloomberg) By Aoife White

International Business Machines Corp. will reach a settlement with European Union antitrust regulators next week to end a probe into mainframe software, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The European Commission intends to accept an offer made by IBM in September to resolve a dispute over anti-competitive behaviour that may have blocked rival mainframe software makers, said the people who couldn’t be identified because the talks are private.

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IT's Most Wanted: Mainframe Programmers

(InfoWorld) By Paul Krill

Before tablets, smartphones, and PCs became prominent, "big iron" mainframes led down the path to computing, becoming a staple of enterprise business worldwide several decades ago. Rather than going the way of the dinosaur as PCs and the client/server model emerged, mainframes remain stalwarts in heavy-duty transactional applications. "The mainframe is alive and well and still powers the global economy," says Dayton Semerjian, general manager for mainframes at CA Associates, which focuses on mainframe technologies. He notes that 80 percent of the Fortune 500 still use them.

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IBM Brings Windows to the Mainframe

(eWeek) By Darryl Taft

IBM has made good on its promise to deliver Windows integration with the IBM mainframe via the zEnterprise System.

When IBM introduced the zEnterprise in July 2010, the company also announced plans to deliver additional general-purpose blades for the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension including IBM System x-based blades running Linux in 2011. IBM also suggested it would support Windows, and in April 2011 it confirmed its plans to deliver Windows support on z/Enterprise.

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Considering open source software for mainframes

(SearchDataCenter.com) By Robert Crawford

By now, most companies have discovered that software constitutes a major expense and a drag on mainframe growth. There are several ways to manage this cost, including delayed hardware upgrades and small processors (sometimes called “penalty boxes”)used exclusively for expensive software packages. A promising path is to do away with the expense entirely through the use of open source software on mainframes.

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QSGI Inc. Files Antitrust Suit Against IBM

(MarketWatch/GlobeNewswire)

Today QSGI, Inc. ("QSGI") announces that a case was filed in the United States District Court, Southern District, on August 3, 2011 with QSGI as the Plaintiff and IBM Global Financing, a Division of International Business Machines Corporation ("IBM") and IBM, parent to and/or d/b/a IBM Global Financing as the Defendants. This action for damages was brought pursuant to the Florida Antitrust Act of 1980. The action claims QSGI operated in direct competition with IBM Global Financing in the resale of used mainframe computers in the open market.

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Mainframe Cloners Drop IBM Antitrust Suits

(InformationWeek) By paul McDougall)

Three companies that manufacture IBM-compatible mainframe hardware and software have agreed to drop antitrust complaints filed against IBM in the U.S. and Europe. Big Blue remains the subject of antitrust probes by the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission.

T3 Technologies and Neon Enterprise Software both have withdrawn their actions, IBM said in its most recent quarterly report. A third company, TurboHercules SAS, which develops open source mainframe emulation software, has also dropped a complaint against IBM, according to Bloomberg.

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Neon, TurboHercules, T3 Drop EU Complaints Against IBM

(eWeek) By Jeffrey Burt

Three companies that had accused IBM of anticompetitive behavior in its mainframe business are dropping the complaints they had filed with the European Union.

According to a recent regulatory filing by IBM, two of the companies—T3 Technologies and Neon Enterprise Software—either have or will withdraw their complaints with European regulators. Meanwhile, officials with a third company—TurboHercules—said Aug. 3 they were no longer pursing their complaint against IBM and its mainframe business.

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Mainframers drop EU antitrust complaints against IBM

(The Register) By Timothy Prickett  Morgan

IBM's iron grip on its big iron business just got a little tighter. Three small companies that have been trying for years to carve out little niches in the System z mainframe market have all withdrawn their complaints with the European Union's antitrust authorities.

The most interesting of the dropped complaints against Big Blue with the EU came from TurboHercules, the French company established in September 2009 by Roger Bowler, the creator of the open source Hercules mainframe hardware emulator. TurboHercules was founded by Bowler to commercialize the Hercules emulator, which allows mainframe operating systems and applications to run on x64 and Itanium processors running Windows, Linux, Mac OS, or Solaris as the host environment for Hercules. The Hercules software can emulate the System/360, the System/370, the ESA/390, and the z mainframe hardware architectures.

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IBM pressure eases after complaints dropped

(Financial Times) By Alex Barker in Brussels and Richard Waters in San Francisco

Antitrust pressures on IBM in Europe eased following news that the three companies whose complaints prompted a European Commission investigation into the US group’s mainframe computer business have dropped their protests.

Although the Commission still has the power to press ahead with both of its probes into IBM, one of which was prompted by the complaints, the decision to withdraw grievances raises the chance of IBM being handed a reprieve in at least one of the cases.

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What the IBM and Neon settlement means for mainframes

(SearchDataCenter.com) By Robert Crawford

I expected June to be the first skirmish in a long battle between Neon Enterprise Software and IBM over software that could reduce licensing costs for customers running mainframes. Instead, on May 31, it was all over. Let's review the history of this conflict, the resulting settlement, and consider what the outcome means for mainframes and users.

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Mainframes Kicking Butt; But Whither Cloud?

(Cloud Computing Journal) By Roger Strukhoff

One of the major IT stories today involves a technology that grew almost 70% year-on-year and practically doubled its market share.

The other involves something that a major research company thinks will only command about 5% of the market in 2015.

The first sounds like a clear-cut winner. The other sounds like something that is dying on the vine.

The first of these is the IBM mainframe; the other is Cloud Computing.

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NEON Settles Mainframe Software Lawsuit with IBM

(eWeek) By Darryl K. Taft

NEON Enterprise Software, a maker of mainframe software, announced it has settled its legal dispute with IBM and will immediately withdraw its zPrime product from the market. 

In the May 31 announcement, NEON said that pursuant to the terms of a permanent injunction, NEON and its distribution partners and affiliates will no longer market, sell, license--including any renewal or extension of any existing license, install, distribute, export, import, offer to sell, offer to license, offer to install, offer to distribute, offer to export or offer to import zPrime.

Moreover, the legal dispute was settled with no payments having been made by either party to the other as part of the settlement.

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Mainframes boost IBM revenues

(Information Age)

IBM's hardware division was its growth driver in the most recent financial quarter.

While overall sales grew 8% to $24.6 billion during the three months ending 31 March 2011, the Systems and Technology segment grew 19% to $4 billion. That was the division's best first quarter growth in a decade.

The division's growth was in turn spurred by increase mainframe revenues. IBM's System z line of mainframe hardware grew revenue 41% during the quarter.

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Getting work onto zIIP processors

(SearchDataCenter) By Robert Crawford

When IBM introduced the zIIP, it sounded like a great idea. Here was an engine that would run at full speed, even on kneecapped processors, and didn't count against capacity-based software licenses. A few minutes later, we found out there were some catches.

Getting onto a zIIP
The first hurdle in getting onto a System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) is creating the right kind of dispatchable work unit. ZIIP-eligible code must run under enclave Service Request Blocks (SRBs). Sadly, the interface for creating enclave SRBs is unpublished and must be purchased from IBM. This effectively limits the interface for vendors interested in exploiting the new engine type.

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New job for mainframes: Cloud platform

(Computerworld) By Tam Harbert

Mention cloud computing to a mainframe professional, and he's likely to roll his eyes. Cloud is just a new name -- and a lot of hype -- for what mainframes have done for years, he'll say.

"A mainframe is a cloud," contends Jon Toigo, CEO and managing principal of Toigo Partners International, a data management consultancy in Dunedin, Fla.

If you, like Toigo, define a cloud as a resource that can be dynamically provisioned -- that is, allocated and de-allocated on demand -- and made available within a company with security and good management controls, "then all of that exists already in a mainframe," he says.

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Not so fast: IBM pushes mainframe toward the cloud

(SearchDataCenter.com) By Beth Pariseau

When they hear the word “mainframe,” today’s generation of IT pros may picture green-screen terminals and room-sized computers, but the traditional mainframe hasn’t stood still. With the announcement of its zEnterprise 196 last summer, IBM started to blend the mainframe and distributed systems worlds, at least for Unix and Linux operating systems, under the auspices of cloud computing.

According to Reed Mullen, leader of IBM System z Cloud Computing initiative, that cloud vision may come to include Windows and x86 server virtualization. “It is the stated intention of IBM to run Windows on System x blades within z/Enterprise -- you can run potentially everything there,” Mullen said. He declined to give a time frame for this feature, but “we know it is a missing piece from the mainframe story.”

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SEC Hits IBM With Bribery-Related Lawsuit, Big Blue Settles for $10 million

(Daily Finance) By Dawn Kawamoto

IBM's buttoned-down reputation has taken a hit -- after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Friday it has reached a $10 million settlement with the company, over allegations IBM violated accounting and internal control provisions relating to the alleged bribery of Chinese and South Korean government officials to secure business.

...In South Korea, , the lawsuit alleges, employees of IBM's Korean subsidiary and joint-venture LG IBM PC paid out around $207,000 in cash bribes. Citing one particular case, regulators allege an IBM Korea territory manager met with a South Korean electronic operations division chief on a regular basis over a three-year period -- giving that individual an IBM Korea shopping bag containing a large envelope with cash. Ultimately, the lawsuit claims, IBM Korea paid out $76,372 in bribes to the operations chief, in exchange for receiving a preferred mainframe computer supplier status and receiving payments from the government at higher prices than warranted.

Other cases of alleged bribery involving IBM Korea included the subsidiary's cluster manager responsible for government sales. Over a two-year period, this IBM Korea manager allegedly paid $21,000 to a government official responsible for mainframe computer purchases. In exchange for the payments, the government official allegedly continued to maintain IBM Korea as the mainframe supplier, and also aided one of the company's business partners in winning a $21 million government bid to supply mainframe computers and storage equipment.

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Study: US government spends $36 billion a year maintaining legacy systems

(ZDNet) Service Oriented blog by Joe McKendrick

As federal CIO Vivek Kundra assesses the need to streamline government IT, he may want to look at the lack of progress in legacy modernization. A new study, based on a survey of 166 senior IT managers in US federal agencies, estimates that agencies spend almost half of the annual federal IT budget, $35.7 billion, maintaining and supporting legacy applications.  In addition, nearly half (47%) of all existing IT applications are based on legacy technology in need of modernization.

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Mainframe year in review 2010

(SearchDataCenter) By Ryan Arenault

You laughed, you may have cried, and it’s certainly possible you might have whiplash from all of the lawsuits. Contributor Robert Crawford was correct in his prediction that 2010 was going to be hectic for the mainframe. It was a year filled with legal battles and an ambitious re-imagining of the mainframe, among other events, including a shaky future for OpenSolaris on System z. 2010 thrust the mainframe into the limelight once again, and for good reason. 

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