The European Commission began antimonopoly investigation against IBM

The European Commission will check IBM corporation regarding compliance to the European antimonopoly regulations. The regulating authority made the decision to initiate at once two independent antimonopoly investigations concerning the company during which the facts treated by the legislation of the European Union as abuse of a dominant position in the market will be considered.

The complaint to IBM which arrived at once from two software vendors, the American T3 and the French Turbo Hercules became a reason for the first trial. Both players said that the American corporation prohibited users to use on the program servers made by it, developed by other companies. The second check is own initiative of European Commission. "the discriminatory behavior" of IBM concerning the rival companies which are engaged in maintenance of servers will become its subject.

At the moment IBM is one of the largest technology companies in the world, it is present at the server market several decades, at the same time servers of the company are usually used by business and the state organizations for processing of data bulks.

At the same time concern of the authorities and competitors of rather leading positions of the company in this market has more than semicentennial history. So, the Department of justice of the USA in 1956 reached the agreement with the company thanks to which the possibility of after-sale use of mainframes, component parts and services was created. This agreement expired in 2001. As for the European Union, here too compounded with "the blue giant" in 1984. Then the agreement was reached that IBM will provide to competitors access to the main server platform. This agreement lasted ten years.

However, despite these measures, most of competitors of IBM did not sustain an impact from corporation. The companies which addressed with complaints are not equipment manufacturers, and are engaged in developments of so-called emulators which allow to start server applications on the inexpensive equipment. The essence of their claim consists that IBM does not permit to purchase licenses of server operating system of zOS for its further use with these emulators.

IBM is aggressive-minded against emulators, believing that they "steal" the intellectual property of the company. T3 and TurboHercules "could not win fight for the investment account in primary activity" and "now want that regulators artificially allocated them the place in the market which they did not deserve", said in the official statement of corporation issued on Monday. IBM promises to render assistance in investigation to the authorities, though regards charges as "groundless".

Sales of mainframes make only 0.02% of the world server market in piece expression, however, as these devices are very expensive, in terms of money they have a share almost in 10%. For IBM it is a crucial segment of business. Sales of mainframes make only 4% of business of the company, but the accompanying software, services bring to IBM already to nearly 25% of income and 40% of net profit.

Investigation of European Commission does not mean automatic recognition of fault of the company, however, confirm intention of the authorities to penetrate in details into a situation in the market. According to the data published by officials of the European Union, at the moment the volume of the world market of mainframes and the accompanying software is €8.5 billion, the European market – €3 billion. Investigation will be made in "a first-priority order", - authorities reported.

Under antimonopoly laws of the European Union, the so-called dominating companies bear huge responsibility to the small competitors. There is also a number of penalties which can be applied to the dominating companies abusing the provision. So, for example, the European Union already fined Microsoft for €2 billion for the market monopolization, and last year obliged to pay Intel to €1 billion for replacement from the market of AMD company.

IBM reasons the position with the fact that it cannot be considered the dominating company as at the market of mainframes there is a number of other players. Besides, believe in IBM that producers of emulators violate their patent rights and should be responsible for this violation.

Obviously, consideration of this precedent will drag on as T3 also filed a similar complaint to IBM to Federal court of the USA and Department of justice of the USA. One more producer of emulators, Platform Solutions, also already tried to plead at the American the bar and the European regulating authorities with similar claims to corporation, then the precedent was exhausted by purchase of IBM of this company.

Sales of mainframes at the moment play a significant role in business of corporation as revenues of IBM grow slowly, in the second quarter they increased by only 2%. On July 22 the company announced a new mainframe which development took three years and cost $1.5 billion.