Multiven Has Renewed Its Accusations That Cisco Abuses Its Position By Tying Software Bug Fixes To Its Maintenance Services
The dispute between Cisco Systems and maintenance service provider Multiven has arrived in Europe with the presentation of a new antitrust agreement on how Cisco provides software updates.
Multiven offers cloud-based services with which organizations can manage, monitor and maintain their IT network assets. Due to Cisco's dominance in the networking sector, the tools and services of any management provider must be compatible with their equipment.
The antitrust suit filed with the European Commission on August 20 is just the latest meeting between the CEO and founder of Multiven, Peter Alfred-Adekeye and his former employer Cisco. Multiven filed an antitrust suit with the Swiss Competition Commission in February last year, while the companies settled a case in the US. UU In 2010.
As part of the latest case, Multiven alleged that Cisco orchestrated the arrest of Alfred-Adekeye on charges of piracy, which Cisco vehemently denied. Multiven earlier this year also accused Cisco of stealing thousands of proprietary data files and copyrights from its knowledge base.
In its latest complaint, Multiven again alleges that Cisco abuses its dominant position to harm consumers by grouping and linking software bug fixes, patches and updates for its operating system and application software to its maintenance services, called SMARTnet.
This approach contrasts with vendors such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and many others, who offer this type of "necessary and crucial" software updates for free, Multiven said Tuesday.
"Cisco's refusal to make all software updates available to all customers who purchased their software not only stifles free and fair competition, but also puts the Internet at risk of avoidable cyber-attacks on a daily basis," said Alfred-Adekeye it's a statement.
The lawsuit also alleges that Cisco is involved in a series of illegal anti-competitive acts, including forcing its 52,000 reseller partners to refuse to negotiate with Multiven and other companies that compete with SMARTnet.
Cisco asserts that the accusations are unfounded
"Multiven is simply repeating similar accusations that it has unsuccessfully made in the past to a number of antitrust regulators, including the European Commission." These allegations are completely without merit and have been consistently rejected or simply ignored, and we hope to discuss these more unfounded accusations with the Commission. European, "the company said by email.
The company said in the past that users are not required to purchase Cisco services and that thousands of partner companies offered service programs, including bug fixes, for their equipment.
This is not the first time that a third-party software maintenance provider and a large provider are involved in a legal battle. Oracle, for example, cracked down on a number of companies that it claims are providing support services for its products illegally, including Rimini Street.
