Big Blue is being sued by a former business partner in a Pennsylvania court for 'betraying' Glasshouse, which describes itself as a 'loyal and longtime' marketer of IBM products.

The allegation runs thus. IBM provides its business partners with sales opportunities and incentives so they can pitch the best prices to customers and service an account.

Glasshouse claims that it relied on IBM promises over pricing during a three year period to woo a customer called SEI Investments to buy a mainframe and migrate data to this computer.

But, according to the filing, 'At the last minute, IBM in violation of promises made to Glasshouse...gave similar favorable priing to a different reseller, Mainline Information Systems...and permitted Mainline to submit a bid to SEI that was lower than Glasshouse's'.
Mainline won the bid, said Glasshouse, and it lost the SEI account, causing 'substantial monetary damages'.

Glasshouse said that before it an SEI-wooing went in 2004, it used machines made by Amdahl and other kit including Sun servers, and stuff from EMC and Oracle.

In March 2006, Glasshouse salesman Peter Flick persuaded SEI to go Big Blue. After hearing that Mainline was pitching for the work, IBM told Glasshouse it wouldn't get preferential pricing. But then, Glasshouse claimed, IBM did give its competitor favourable pricing.

And so Glasshouse wants damages from Big Blue of not less than $3,000,000 and punitive damages, in addition. X