IBM Says Anti-IBM ICRIER Report Has No Credibility
IT News Online Staff
2010-03-13
IBM has responded to the OpenMainframe-sponsored ICRIER-Indicus report on The Issues of Competition in Mainframe and Associated Services in India saying the report has no credibility.
According to an IBM Spokesperson:
"This report was written by Openmainframe.org, an organization that is a front group for many of IBM's competitors. So you must consider the source of these unfounded accusations.
Openmainframe.org is bought and paid for by Microsoft and other IBM competitors, so it's hardly surprising that it would be making an anti-IBM argument. This report has no credibility.
The accusations in this report are not being driven by the interests of clients, but rather by some of IBM's competitors. To call the IBM mainframe a 'monopoly' is silly. IBM servers face vigorous competition. IBM's System z servers constitute less than 10% of all server revenue and 0.03% of total server shipments.
In fact, only a decade ago, the IBM mainframe was on the verge of extinction because of competition from Wintel and other distributed platforms that still heavily dominate the market today. But by investing billions of dollars in research and development, IBM improved the mainframe platform and enhanced its competitiveness.
Even while doing so, IBM regularly has lowered the prices paid by clients for doing work on the mainframe. As a result, IBM's clients have benefited from innovation on the platform, and an alternative to Unix and Windows has been preserved. Continuous quality improvements and reduced prices are not what one would expect from a so-called monopoly."
According to the ICRIER-Indicus report, India's high-end computer market is dominated by IBM (with 50% market share), HP (33%) and Sun (17%).
"During the MRTP days this would have been sufficient to launch investigations against IBM because of its size. Competition authorities, influenced by Chicago, no longer believe that the relation between a high market share and market power is obvious. We therefore need to further probe IBM's conduct and ask whether it has denied customers benefits of technological innovation and whether it charged above-market prices for IBM solutions, including the mainframe in India," said the ICRIER-Indicus report.
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