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Jim Duffy

Cisco sued again by services company

Independent service organization Multiven this week filed another antitrust complaint against Cisco alleging again that the networking king abuses its dominant position in the market by denying opportunities for third-parties to service Cisco gear.

You might remember Multiven as the ISO founded by Peter Alfred-Adekeye, the former Cisco engineer at the center of a twisted episode in which Cisco allegedly orchestrated his arrest on hacking charges to force a settlement in a similar 2008 suit between the two parties. That case was settled in 2010, but not without Cisco wiping some egg from its face and Alfred-Adekeye indicted on the hacking charges.

This week's suit charges Cisco with bundling and tying software bug fixes, patches and updates to its SMARTnet maintenance services, "and through a series of other illegal exclusionary and anti-competitive acts designed to maintain Cisco's monopoly in the network maintenance services market for Cisco networking equipment." Multiven says this alleged practice seeks to "harm consumers" by locking out third-party ISOs from the Cisco equipment service and support market and forcing customers into SMARTnet contracts. The ISO claims Apple, HP and Microsoft make software updates available to anyone that's purchased those vendors' operating system and application software licenses.
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