T3 Technologies and Platform Solutions, Inc. (PSI), two companies that are trying to carve out a piece of the mainframe market from IBM, are staying active in securing funding and pursuing lawsuits against Big Blue.

PSI countersued IBM earlier this year after IBM claimed in a lawsuit that PSI was violating its patents for the z/OS mainframe operating system. PSI claims that IBM is illegally shutting out competition by coupling its mainframe hardware with z/OS and not letting others join the fun.

Now T3 Technologies wants to intervene in the PSI lawsuit and filed a 48-page motion in U.S. District Court on Nov. 26, also claiming anti-competitive business practices by IBM. In addition to selling its own 31-bit Intel-based tServer mainframe, T3 Technologies resells PSI hardware through a licensing and distribution agreement.

Meanwhile, PSI announced a new round of funding that, among other contributors, includes Microsoft Corp., which would like nothing more than to see IBM mainframes go down. This summer, PSI introduced new Intel-based mainframe hardware capable of scaling up to 2,000 MIPS.

PSI CEO Michael Maulick said his company’s intentions were always to just be an alternative to the IBM mainframe, but that “IBM has been overactive in pursuing the market.”

“When I started this company back in 2003, the lower end of the market did not have a solution,” he said. “As IBM came out with bigger systems, IBM was not catering to smaller customers.”

“From day one, I have not been trying to be in IBM’s face,” he added. “They cannot see that I’m a potential ally. They think I’m an enemy.”