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Commission initiates formal investigations against IBM in two cases of suspected abuse of dominant market position

by Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission

(26 July, 2010)

The European Commission has decided to initiate formal antitrust investigations against IBM Corporation in two separate cases of alleged infringements of EU antitrust rules related to the abuse of a dominant market position (Article 102 TFEU). Both cases are related to IBM's conduct on the market for mainframe computers. The first case follows complaints by emulator software vendors T3 and Turbo Hercules, and focuses on IBM's alleged tying of mainframe hardware to its mainframe operating system. The second is an investigation begun on the Commission's own initiative of IBM's alleged discriminatory behaviour towards competing suppliers of mainframe maintenance services.

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Bowler Roger Bowler Responds to IBM Patent Attack on Open Source

by Roger Bowler Creator of Hercules and Co-founder of TurboHercules

(Posted in News & Blogs section of turbohercules.com on 6 April, 2010)

As many of you know, the company I founded to promote the Hercules open source mainframe emulator, TurboHercules SAS, has filed an antitrust complaint against IBM with the European Commission in Brussels. We are not asking that IBM be subjected to punishing fines or anything like that. We simply want IBM to agree to allow legitimate paying customers of its z/OS mainframe operating system to deploy that software on the hardware platforms of their choice – including, should they so choose, on low-cost servers using Intel or AMD microprocessors and Hercules.

I want to make clear that we undertook this action reluctantly, and only after a long period of reflection during which we reached out to IBM to see if there was some way to resolve our differences amicably. I regret to report that IBM rebuffed our efforts at conciliation, and even added fuel to the fire by launching accusations against Hercules. I would like to take this opportunity to respond to some of those charges.

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Steven Friedman The T3 Technologies story

by Steven Friedman, T3 Technologies

For over 15 years, my company was a successful IBM Business Partner. I used to have a thriving company with over 50 employees, nearly 1,000 customers in 28 countries (including 200 customers in 15 European Community states) and a profitable revenue stream earned through selling mainframe solutions to IBM customers. However, now our company is effectively out of business due to the direct actions of the company I used to be closely aligned with: IBM.

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Monday

Jul262010

IBM in EU Antitrust Probe Over Mainframes

July 26, 2010

(ServerWatch) By Andy Patrizio

IBM is facing regulatory scrutiny from the European Commission, which launched two separate antitrust investigations into Big Blue's mainframe business.

...Martin Reynolds, a research vice president with Gartner, describes an IBM loss as likely to result in "a big fine and a changing of IBM's habits."

"IBM would be compelled to give the local company access to a license," he told InternetNews.com, adding that T3 and TurboHercules could potentially argue that a customer who previously bought a mainframe could transfer the mainframe license to commodity x86 software and use that hardware to run mainframe software.

"TurboHercules have a good story," Reynolds said. "If you're government agency with these old mainframes kicking around, you can put your old software on some x86 stuff and scrap the mainframe. They've got a reasonable technology but it's difficult for them to get a license because IBM won't allow them to run [IBM] software."

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