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EU launches antitrust probe against IBM

By | July 26, 2010, 7:48am PDT

Summary: The European Commission has launched an investigation against IBM over a pair of antitrust allegations; IBM says the claims have no merit.

The European Commission today launched two formal antitrust investigations against IBM Corp. over two alleged infringements of EU antitrust rules about abusing a dominant market position, the commission said in a statement. (PDF)

The first case is in response to complaints by software vendors T3 an Turbo Hercules over the tying of mainframe hardware to the mainframe operating system. The second is an investigation launched by the commission itself over alleged discrimination toward competing suppliers of mainframe maintenance services, the commission said.

IBM said the claims, which the company said were the result of a campaign of competitors led by Microsoft an its “satellite proxies,” have no merit, according to a Bloomberg report. In that report, IBM said:

Certain IBM competitors which have been unable to win in the marketplace through investments in fundamental innovations now want regulators to create for them a market position that they have not earned.

The commissions said that the complaints contend that tying the mainframe and OS shuts out providers of emulation technology that would allow critical apps to run on non-IBM hardware. The commission said it also has concerns that IBM is engaging in anticompetitive practices by restricting or delaying access to spare parts that only IBM can provide.

The investigation comes days after IBM unveiled a new hybrid mainframe design that aims to cut data center sprawl and be a bridge to other systems.

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Commission, Antitrust, IBM Corp., Mainframes, Sales Force Management, Servers, Hardware, Sales, Sam Diaz

Sam has been a technology and business blogger for more than 18 years.

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Sam Diaz

Sam Diaz has nothing to disclose.

Biography

Sam Diaz

Sam has been a technology and business blogger, reporter and editor at ZDNet, the Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News and Fresno Bee for more than 18 years. He's a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a graduate of California State University, Fresno.

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RE: EU launches antitrust probe against IBM
FAULKNE 13th Oct
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Wow, HUGE ramifications for Apple!!
NonZealot 26th Jul 2010
over the tying of mainframe hardware to the mainframe operating system

Apple had better hope and pray that IBM wins this one or that Apple never finds themselves in a situation where a market can be defined such that Apple has a dominant position in that market (like the $1,000+ PC market that Apple has a 95% marketshare wink ).

We get told time and time and time again by Apple zealots that you are allowed to tie an OS and hardware together. Well, we are about to find out if they are right or not!

Mmmm, love the smell of Internet popcorn!
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RE: EU launches antitrust probe against IBM
AndyPagin 26th Jul 2010
Fairly big ramifications for Microsoft as well. If this establishes a principal that hardware and o/s are separate entities, then providing new pc hardware with a pre-installed o/s could be considered anti-competitive where one o/s provider (guess who) had an overwhelming market share due to contracts tying oems into their o/s.
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This was already addressed
NonZealot 26th Jul 2010
@AndyPagin
due to contracts tying oems into their o/s

If MS was caught doing this again, they would be in violation of previous anti-trust rulings. This has no effect on MS since MS is not tying their hardware with their OS which is what this investigation is about.
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RE: EU launches antitrust probe against IBM
rtk 26th Jul 2010
@AndyPagin

If microsoft sold computers you'd have a point. OEM's sell computers with their hardware and MS's software, there's no product tying even possible.
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Not the same thing
John Zern 26th Jul 2010
The manufacturers choose to install Windows on their systems because they want to sell a turn-key computer, not because that hardware is tied to Windows in any way.

These systems could even run OS X, but Apple stops that by tying their OS and hardware together.
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haha looks like ibm will be the test case for apple.
Been_Done_Before 26th Jul 2010
Though apple may have an out since their OS will run on most i486+.

I think the real complaint here comes from VMWare, but i guess MS could have something to do with it.

I would love to virtualize our AIX system
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deja vu
bmeacham98@... 27th Jul 2010
Didn't IBM go through a similar thing 20 or 30 years ago in the US? As I recall, they lost.
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RE: EU launches antitrust probe against IBM
FAULKNE 13th Oct
Good day to confirm this comment I would appreciate T h e b e s t o f Z D N e t d e l i v e r e d your website very nice to everyone Yes, Oracle is the only one with shared-disk architecture, but that is there advantage. It means you can add or remove nodes and the database lives on. In a shared nothing architecture, if you lose a node, you lose the system. I'm sure Oracle appreciates EMC highlighting their advantage.I also desire to signal in your RSS feeds. Thank you as soon as once again and maintain up the great operate Awesome post! Thank you very much || thanks for nice content this is really benefit to me.

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