Compuware Brings IBM to Antitrust Court

pcs305 writes " According to a news article at Yahoo, Compuware is accusing IBM of stealing code and copying Compuware manuals. They also accuse IBM of being a monopoly in the mainframe market and of anti-competitive behaviour. "

Comments

Big Blue

[Xamdam_us]

I work a rather large company that might as well have an "IBM inside" logo added to ours. I would say that 99% or our computers are IBM. From the mainframe right on down to desktops and servers. I can see how it would be frustrating for a competitor to break the hold IBM has here. Especially where the mainframe is concerned.

Just the cost of switching to another OS for the mainframe, not to mention if you wanted to switch hardware, would be outrageous. Like the article says not to many companies besides Microsoft have such a hold.

Re:IBM a monopoly in the mainframe market?

[ObitMan]

your kidding right?
there is still no better way for business to do the raw processing than on a mainframe.
I work in the insurance industry and we have them working all the time computing actuarial tables as well as other in house functions.
Just got in 5 of the new eServers running Linux from IBM. ~2m tall, black, air cooled. yum
Big iron will be around for a long time.

Re:Can't compete? Sue!

[Anonymous Coward]

As an ex systems programmer, many sites had problems with the cost Cware (and CA) charged for their offerings, and outraged to have to pay double or triple, just because they got a bigger cpu. for say, db2 - with fileaid usage remaining static So folk looked for alternatives - ask the makers of the control * products who won market share.

IBM is sore, because high 3rd party licence fees saw their revenues drop too. So then came posix/linux. With SED, AWK and RE, are we really surprised fileaid took a hit?
Thats on top of everyone who migrated to sun and MS (with expen$ive Y2K memories lingering). IBM is blameless.

In short, if pricing was fairer, the cake would be bigger now.
The fact that people are choosing inferior OS's because the real cost of Z/os is percieved to be high, says further 3rd party price reductions are needed - like SAS on the M/f
Nope, people are voting with their hip pocket, with MS as the benchmark.

Re:non-IBM Activation?

[anonymous cupboard]

What happens if a non-IBM person activates the other processors. Now that hard and software support can be completely unbundled and even passed away from IBM - can they stop a customer from upgrading their system?

Re:This is "anti-competitive"?

[anlprb]

I am also at UPS, Par building. I saw a couple of presentations by the Compuweenies. Those tools are so darned underpowered and ineffective. We were so disgusted with the solution that Compuware came up with that I wrote our own inhouse tool to do PLD verification. These people gave us this story that their tool could compare a file to a database so easily, and flawlessly that we would be as happy as pigs in slop. It took them 10 min just to get through reading in a file. It should have only taken them the 4 seconds that my tool takes. Garbage, and sheisters.