By SuperUser Account on 12/3/2010 9:55 AM
By: Maureen O'Gara
Has spent years looking for ways into the very high-end server market
Microsoft has tucked some undisclosed - and from its point of view immaterial - amount of money in Paris-based TurboHercules SAS, the year-old open source mainframe project-turned-commercial emulator outfit whose antitrust complaint against IBM spurred the European Commission to open not one but two ongoing Justice Department-mimicking antitrust investigations of Big Blue.
Microsoft has spent years looking for ways into the very high-end server market and it has previously ploughed an unknown amount of money into companies like TurboHercules that have been trying to nibble at the edges of IBM's huge mainframe monopoly.
The software side of mainframes is estimated to be worth $25 billion.
Whatever money Microsoft put in TurboHercules for whatever exchange of equity, the start-up would still like to talk to other potential investors. Its widgetry can run mainframe apps on x86 machines.