EC set to close antitrust investigation into IBM

IBM defangs mainframe probe by promising to play nice with rivals

The European Commission looks set to park its antitrust investigation into IBM’s dominance of the mainframe maintenance market after the systems giant promised to make parts and technical information available to competitors for the next five years.

That commitment looks likely to end the EC antitrust investigation, although the Commission is inviting competitors to comment before deciding whether to close the case.

"I commend IBM's readiness to address our concerns about fair competition in the market for large computers which are crucial for the functioning of today's economy," said competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia.

The EC began investigations in July 2010, following concerns that IBM had imposed unreasonable conditions on the supply of spare parts and technical data for its mainframes.

It had also begun investigating whether IBM had breached its competition rules by tying its mainframe hardware to its operating systems, following complaints from software vendors T3, Turbo Hercules and Neon Enterprise Software.

The EC has also now closed this investigation and the complaints have been withdrawn.