ICRIER report has no credibility: IBM

INDIA: To call the IBM mainframe a 'monopoly' is silly is what comes as IBM's answer to an ICRIER-Indicus report that on Friday alleged the Big Blue as a Big Fish that in the mainframe market, is under pricing its products, resorting to predatory pricing and is a monopolistic force that calls the attention as well as action from CCI (Competition Commission of India).

IBM attributes these accusations to be driven from competition's soil. 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, stated an IBM spokesperson.

Explaining more the company states, "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."

Notably, The Issues of Competition in Mainframe and AssociatedServices in India report, also alleged IBM to have extracted huge profits from proprietary mainframe offerings for long in the US and Europe and "it is unlikely that this will change in the near future".

But IBM clarifies that IBM’s System z servers constitute less than 10 percent of all server revenue and 0.03 percent of total server shipments globally.  "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."