NEWS & ANALYSIS

EU 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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BowlerRoger 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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The Issues of Competition in Mainframe and Associated Services in India

by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations and Indicus Analytics

Very little is known about the extent and nature of competition in the mainframe and associated services market in India. This is the first study to analyze competition and related issues in the Indian server market, with an extensive focus on mainframe computing.

Download the report PDF (4MB)

Steven FriedmanThe 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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Thursday
Dec172009

NEON and IBM Lawsuit May Impact Mainframe Software Pricing

DateDecember 17, 2009

(Gartner) By Mike Chuba and John R. Phelps

On 14 December 2009, Neon Enterprise Software filed a lawsuit against IBM claiming violation of the Lanham Act, alleging unfair competitive tactics, disparagement and business interference. IBM claims the suit is without merit. Neon claims IBM's tactics are keeping end users from utilizing its zPrime product, which is costing Neon business.

Neon introduced its zPrime product earlier in 2009. The intent of zPrime is to reduce the cost of running traditional application workloads on an IBM mainframe through expanded use of IBM's System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) and System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) specialty engines. zPrime enables customers to shift some work that would otherwise run on higher-priced general-purpose processor hardware to these lower-priced specialty engines. Because IBM and third-party mainframe software vendors typically price based on the capacity of the general-purpose processors in the mainframe and not specialty processors, using fewer general-purpose processors could lower the cost of licensing the software dramatically. This is important as the costs of software license costs (from IBM and independent software vendors) has been seen as the major inhibitor to mainframe growth.

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