On Monday, the first investigation of the EU announcement was in regard to complaints to the EU from T3 and TurboHercules that allege IBM is unfairly tying its mainframe hardware products to z/OS.  Another investigation in the announcement stems from EU’s own plans to look into alleged discriminatory behavior on IBM’s part to competing mainframe suppliers.

With its statement, IBM is staunch in its denial of any silencing of the competition.  “IBM is fully entitled to enforce its intellectual property rights and protect the investments we have made in our technologies,” said the company. “Competition and intellectual property laws are complementary and designed to promote competition and innovation, and IBM fully supports these policies. But IBM will not allow the fruits of its innovation and investment to be pirated by its competition through baseless allegations.”

It certainly is interesting, though, that there are no specific details in the statement of what exactly they’re trying to protect, and what the “intellectual property rights” actually are, along with how they’ve violated those laws.  Vague statements sometimes allow people to fill in the blanks and question a company’s real motives.  Put Florian Mueller, a software developer and government affairs professional, into that category.

“I’m convinced that customers are locked in and milked shamelessly by IBM,” said Mueller in a blog post that he shared with SearchDataCenter.com.  “I hope that the outcome of the process will result in more customer choice.”

What do you think of IBM’s case?  Is they trying to “enforce their intellectual property rights,” or are they trying to make it impossible for others to penetrate the mainframe market?

zPrime is designed to keep mainframe/IMS costs down and makes only IMS workloads run on and take advantage of cost-effective specialty processors.  The software also utilizes zPrime 2.1’s base.

Some are thinking that the announcement has a lot to do with Neon trying to gain the upper hand in its suit against IBM, originally filed in December, which alleges IBM engaged in unfair business practices by warning Neonand potential Neon customers against using zPrime software. 

“It sounds like they’re [Neon] trying to get as many zPrime users as possible, as soon as possible,” said one mainframe industry expert, speaking with SearchDataCenter.com.  “I figure that more zPrime users gives Neon more leverage in their ongoing dispute with IBM.  It also means they can go into court claiming there’s a groundswell of protest against IBM’s unfair trade practices.”

Neon, though, may have sold itself short in trying to gather momentum against IBM by limiting the software to just IMS workloads.

“IMS is CPU hungry which means a big payback for shops that use it,” said the same mainframe industry insider.  “In addition, the shops that run on IMS tend to be the larger ones.  Maybe Neon is walking a fine line between getting new customers while not provoking IBM too much.”

The software is available now from Neon.  In regard to the suit, it’s still an ongoing story, with Neon recently taking its issues overseas by filing a complaint with the European Commission.  

IBM’s 37-page response is actually longer than Neon’s 24-page lawsuit, which was filed in Austin, Tex. District Court in December. Neon’s main claims were that IBM wasn’t playing fair by trying to limit competition and intimidating prospective Neon clients. The original suit stemmed from Neon’s zPrime software, which allows users to offload workloads from the mainframe’s central processors to specialty mainframe processors. This in itself isn’t unusual, but what zPrime does is allow users to offload more work to these specialty processors than IBM intended, which saves them money because software licensing rules that apply on the main processors don’t apply on the specialty ones.

In its lawsuit, Neon claimed that IBM’s unlawful actions could cost potential Neon customers more than $1 billion in software licensing fees.

IBM has now shot back, however, saying that the issue is really about Neon’s “attempted hijacking of IBM’s intellectual property.” IBM compared what Neon is doing to a “crafty technician who promises, for a fee, to rig your cable box so you can watch premium TV channels without paying the cable company. Even if it could be accomplished technically, it is neither lawful nor ethical.”

Big Blue isn’t stopping at defending its practices, however, which Neon called a “monopoly” in its original lawsuit. Instead, IBM is making counterclaims and asking the court not only to dismiss Neon’s claims, but also to force Neon to stop selling zPrime, give Neon’s zPrime profits to IBM, and award IBM any other damages that the court sees fit.

In part to ease this pricing pain and keep its customers from moving work off the mainframe, IBM introduced specialty processors such as the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), the System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP), and the System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP). Though the specialty processors are the same physical hardware as the central processors, what IBM intended to have customers runs on each was different.

Big Blue’s intention was to allow some z/OS workloads – Linux, DB2, and Java – to move to these specialty processors, where software licensing was free. The processors have become popular among mainframers, in particular the IFL and zIIP. Meanwhile, IBM wanted mainframers to keep their legacy applications on z/OS on the central processors, where licensing fees were still huge.

Neon bucked those intentions. At the end of June, it announced its zPrime software, claiming that mainframers could offload more than just database and Java workloads to the zIIP and zAAP. And then the war of words began. IBM started warning customers that zPrime could cause mainframers to violate software agreements they had with IBM. Neon disagreed. The verbal back-and-forth continued for a few months. Now, it’s a legal back-and-forth.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association has pursued Big Blue for decades in an effort to rein in the technology giant’s allegedly unfair behavior.

The CCIA now has added encouragement from a tiny firm backed by IBM rival Microsoft Corp., which has lodged an antitrust complaint in Europe, while pressing a related lawsuit in federal court in New York and sounding out U.S. regulators. T3 Technologies Inc. argues that IBM unfairly has sewn up the market for mainframes, the powerful machines relied upon by virtually every Fortune 500 company to crunch data.

The CCIA is also responsible for promoting antitrust action against Intel for trying to push AMD out of the x86 server market.

You can read more about CCIA’s position on the mainframe here.