DOJ tries to step in front of IBM mainframe biz steamroller

The Department of Justice begun an investigation into whether IBM has abused its mainframe position: Should/could it change anything?

IBM’s mainframe business has over the years been somewhat of a steamroller, rarely slowing down to take a look at the little things in its way it may have crushed.

Word today that the Department of Justice has begun a preliminary investigation into whether IBM has abused its monopoly in mainframe computers will likely fall under the category of things the Big Iron slowed down for but ultimately ran over anyway.

NetworkWorld Extra: How to really bury a mainframe

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IBM’s mainframe business has over the years been somewhat of a steamroller, rarely slowing down to take a look at the little things in its way it may have crushed.

Word today that the Department of Justice has begun a preliminary investigation into whether IBM has abused its monopoly in mainframe computers will likely fall under the category of things the Big Iron slowed down for but ultimately ran over anyway.

NetworkWorld Extra: How to really bury a mainframe

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Not to diminish what is a preliminary DOJ investigation but the background to this one sounds little like things are just going in a circle.

To start, published reports say the Computer and Communications Industry Association, had complained to the DOJ recently about some unsavory IBM IBM's behavior. Thus the DOJ began asking for information about the mainframe market to IBM rivals.

One of those rivals was T3 Technologies, which just last week lost civil suit it had filed against IBM.

According to the Financial Times, the judge said T3 did not have a case to make because IBM had licensed the technology in the past to two of the company’s suppliers, rather than to T3 directly. He added that the suppliers, which had brought complaints of their own, also lacked a case, since IBM had acted within its rights to stop licensing its old software when it moved on to a new generation of technology.

T3 Technologies has an ongoing antitrust complaint against IBM with European regulators as well.

But T3’s IBM angst runs deeper. The company was a strong supporter of fellow IBM mainframe clone maker Platform Solutions (PSI), a privately held company with whom Big Blue had traded lawsuits with over Big Iron technology until 2008 when IBM had enough and just bought the company outright.

Long time IBM critic CCIA also weighed in at the time calling the IBM/PSI acquisition a black hole: “It sucks the life out of the market and destroys the matter. "

The deal transforms a market with potential for competition into one "with little prospects for anything but complete domination by IBM," said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. "When it comes to violations of competition law, IBM appears to be an unrepentant recidivist," he said.

The DOJ abandoned a 1956 antitrust consent degree against IBM in 2001, but said that IBM could be subject to a new antitrust lawsuit if it engaged in anticompetitive behavior.

As in the new case, rivals say IBM has shut out other mainframe vendors by ending support for older mainframe systems and not licensing its mainframe software to rivals.

CCIA's complaint against IBM alleges that the company has refused to issue licenses for IBM's mainframe OS to competitors, as required in a 1970s antitrust consent decree with the DOJ that was terminated in 2001. In some cases, IBM has yanked the OS license from customers trying to switch from IBM mainframe hardware to a competitor's,” charges Black.

Will all of this hurt IBM? Seems unlikely. According to a recent study of 300 end users by researchers at IDC nearly one-half of said they plan to increase annual spending on mainframe hardware and software.