IBM faces anti-trust complaint in EU
Nibble
Mainframe maker said it was boxed out of the market
Tuesday, 20 January 2009, 10:25
A US MAINFRAME maker has filed an antitrust complaint against IBM claiming it was knocked out of the EU by Big Blue's refusal to sell its customers the operating software to run its machines.
T3 Technologies had $20 million in annual sales until 2006, when IBM stopped licensing technology to a key T3 supplier, and stopped selling operating-software licenses to T3 customers.
T3 builds machines using off-the-shelf components fitted with "emulators" to make software believe it is running on an IBM mainframe. It does this cheaper than Biggish Blue, the outfit claims. µ
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They've been doing this for over 20 years (which is why Olivetti/Hitachi and the others no longer manufacture mainframes), but apparently our politicians were too busy frying other fishes....
If you had an Hitachi, in the late '80s the cost for a MVS licence was about 8 times higher than if you owned an 390.... Same applied to all IBM stuff.
Ours is surely a niche market, but boy! The amount of money circulating in this niche is huge..... (and if you know CoBOL or s/390 ASM your job is recession proof!)