Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Oracle on Intel Itanium: HP misleading customers

By Larry Dignan | March 24, 2011, 6:55am PDT

Summary: HP said Oracle was putting customers at risk for dropping Itanium support. Oracle said just the opposite is true.

Oracle issued another statement in the war of words over the future of Intel’s Itanium chip.

In this installment of the Itanium saga, Oracle responds to HP’s response about Larry Ellison & Co. dropping support for Itanium, a chip for HP-UX Unix machines.

HP on Wednesday said that Oracle was putting customers at risk for dropping Itanium support. Oracle differs. Also see: Time for the decoder ring: Oracle ends Itanium support, ruckus ensues

In a statement, Oracle said:

Oracle has an obligation to give our customers adequate advanced notice when Oracle discontinues development on any software product or hardware platform so our customers have the information they need to plan and manage their businesses. HP is well aware that Intel’s future direction is focused on X86 and that plans to replace Itanium with X86 are already in place. HP is knowingly withholding this information from our joint Itanium customers. While new versions of Oracle software will not run on Itanium, we will support existing Oracle/Itanium customers on existing Oracle products. In fact, Oracle is the last of the major software companies to stop development on Itanium.

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

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jywhy888 7th Mar

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Not just for Unix.....

Lesaar 24th Mar 2011

The HP Itanium systems also run good ol' VMS.

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I am sure that someone could get CP/M running on it

balsover 25th Mar 2011

@Lesaar ...but that doesn't make it a more viable platform for the future.

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My spies tell me that Oracle's future direction is focused on software. SPARC is a low-volume also-ran in RISC space; within a few years, chips based on the ARM architecture will be outperforming SPARC in both performance and price. Wise customers will plan accordingly.

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Yes both are dead ends. Unfortuantely for hp oracle has intel as a

Johnny Vegas 24th Mar 2011

collaborating source. Oracle probably wont admit their plans to kill sparc for a couple more years, long after this is forgotten...

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RE: Oracle on Intel Itanium: HP misleading customers

ShesAllOverIT 24th Mar 2011

This is what happens when two uber egos (Ellison & Hurd) join forces and misbehave. For Hurd's part, this is simply pouting about being dismissed for his arrogance. Prior to his dismissal, he was about to demand 100M for his next contract. Point in fact is that Hurd?s dismissal (wait, some of you still believe he resigned?) from HP had very little to do with his illicit wick dipping with a bimbo, she simply served as the catalyst the board needed for ridding themselves of the egomaniac. So to that point, we can say that Hurd got what he was after from her at least twice. Expensive, but he got it. As for Ellison, this is simply another of Larry?s tirades in his quest to rule the world, and feed his ever expanding appetite for self aggrandizing. Proof once again that money does not make a man. My God boys, will you ever grow up and be responsible adults?

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Egos not withstanding Ellison is simply stating the obvious on this topic

balsover 25th Mar 2011

Most every other major vendor wrote off the Itanium a long time ago.

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It's not that obvious

oracleif Updated - 27th Mar 2011

@balsover - So Oracle says Microsoft and Red Hat have abandoned Itanium, proving it's a dead platform. And what are Microsoft and Red Hat doing on SPARC these days? By this logic, Oracle should just write off their hardware business as a loss and shut it down.

Even if Itanium is effectively HP-proprietary in all but name, so what? It still commands significant high-end Unix server market share, behind only POWER at this point. Oracle saying that they're pulling the plug on Itanium because it's doomed is little more than an attempt at self-fulfilling prophecy. Or perhaps wishful thinking.

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RE: Oracle on Intel Itanium: HP misleading customers

scotth_z 4th Apr 2011

@oracleif

They are both dead... they are snarking at each other for the shrinking x64 pie. It may be just a question of which goes first SPARC or Itanium without Oracle.

IBM has to be laughing their a$$ off... since the obvious answer to both platforms is migrate to DB2/Linux or DB2/AIX.

1st... it's not like Oracle isn't doing what MS and RedHat have already done. The facts are, is that Itanium has been rumored to be going away for several years.

2nd... It's not like Ultrasparc is in any better position... With Oracle/Sun down to 5.5% of the market share, people have been questioning IT'S long term viability, too.

3rd... HP's response to what to do with their existing Oracle / HP_UX customer environment is laughable...

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Mission-Critical-Computing-Blog/FAQs-from-HP-on-the-Oracle-Itanium-Announcement/ba-p/89977

Their answers are one of the following, repeated several times:
We passed Sun/Oracle as the #2 UNIX
We have 140,000 Oracle/HP_ux customers
We are commited to 10 years of Itanium
Ask Oracle...
We need to ask senior HP management...

I don't find any of these answers as reassuring to an Oracle/HP_UX/Itanium shop on what direction to go in.

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