IBM Corp has succeeded in its bid to have most of the provisions of the 1956 anti-trust consent decree voided, and it is now free to resell used RS/6000s – for whatever price it can get. That liberty highlights how much the world has changed in the intervening 40 years: used RS/6000s – or any other Unix box for that matter – aren’t actually worth more than about 5% of list. The market is so much more competitive now, and IBM so much less dominant, that the relaxations look more like a license to find ingenious new ways to lose money. The Integrated Systems Solutions CO no longer needs to be run at arm’s lengthm and is now free to buy mainframes from IBM at whatever low price it needs to undercut all competitors – but if it does, it will simply mean that the whole deal will be less profitable – and the services business already barely covers overheads. Equally, IBM is free to absorb IBM Credit Corp and write leases that knock Comdisco Inc or General Electric Credit Corp out of the deal, but only at the expense of making a loss on the deal. The court order terminates the decree in its entirety for all IBM products except the System 390 mainframe and AS/400 mid-range lines, and the only important surviving restriction here is that IBM must continue to provide spares and manuals to third party maintainers and brokers at a fair price; IBM still wants the decree rescinded in its entirety as a matter of principle.
