ICL does not abuse mainframe maintenance
PrintSmall fish in a big pond
Posted in Hardware, 24th July 2001 12:53 GMT
Free whitepaper – Reliability analysis of the APC Symmetra MW Power System
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has thrown out a complaint that ICL violated competition laws by stitching up the market for maintaining the mainframe computers it supplies.
Synstar Computer Services, a rival maintenance biz, was aggrieved at its inability to obtain a full diagnostic service on mainframes. It accused ICL was of witholding the information to maintain its dominant position in the market.
The OFT rejected the complaint, largely because it felt that ICL did not have a dominant position in the mainframe market.
Given that most manufacturers have pulled out of the market in recent years, bar IBM (of course), it's hard to fault the watchdog's reasoning. Last year Amdahl, which like ICL is a subsidiary of Fujitsu, decided to pull out of the mainframe hardware supply business.
The OFT dismissed Synstar's argument that hardware maintenance forms a separate market to the mainframe biz. The OFT ruled that mainframe buyers think about maintenance when they buy Big Iron machines. ®
Related Stories
Amdahl stops making mainframes
ICL brand put to the sword
Services, ZzzSeries boost IBM figures
IBM ships revamped mainframe
Enabling The Agile Data Center
Dell PowerEdge M710 with Dell EqualLogic storage vs. HP ProLiant BL685c with HP StorageWorks EVA 4400
Seven ways to lower storage costs
Capacity management in virtual infrastructures
IBM System Blue Gene/P solution brochure
FAST takes its sweet time
Say hello to Seagate's Pulsar SSD
Microsoft and NetApp find love in adversity
HP shows smallest pod in the world, talks HPC