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Neon sues Big Blue
AN OUTFIT CALLED Neon Enterprise Software has sued IBM over claims that it has been trying to stop System z mainframe owners from using Neon zPrime software.
Neon claims that Biggish Blue has violated the Lanham Act and state unfair competition laws. There are dark legalistic mutterings about "business disparagement" and "tortious interference", which sounds like something you get in a Soho cellar from someone called Dolores.
Neon claims that IBM has been saying jolly nasty things about what zPrime can do and it is after shedloads of damages.
zPrime is a proprietary software product that enables IBM System z business application workloads including IMS, DB2, CICS, TSO/ISPF and batch to run on Neon's equally fast, lower-cost zIIP and zAAP specialty processors, according to Neon.
The company says it has customers all over the world and claims it saves them fortunes in the costs of processing workloads on mainframe computers. µ
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If rich wargo is right, Neon will be swallowed whole by IBM via an acquisition (ref.: Platform Solutions, Inc - how to run z/os on Itanium metal). If he's wrong, big glue will either trounce 'em in court or punish customers who use the trick (see also: "So you'd like to keep that MVS running on Hitachi hardware, wouldn't you? Well, yearly license is now 8 times what it was last year..."). Unfortunately, IBM has a monopoly on mainframes... and no-one cares!
Glad to see there are mainframe-ole-farts around, tho!
Ed, it would be nice if you did a bit of investigation before posting your articles. You imply that Neon Enterprise Software (NES) furnishes zSeries compatible hardware.
NES markets software that enables IBM zSeries users to run IMS, DB2, CICS, TSO/ISPF and batch workloads on the zAAP (zSeries Application Assist Processor) and zIIP (zSeries Integrated Information Processor) specialty processors which are marketed by IBM as "additional processing capacity exclusively for specific workloads."
In other words, it allows a user to get more performance out of a zSeries than IBM intended, by allowing workloads other than what IBM intended to run on the specialty processors.
But it is software. The hardware is still IBM zSeries.