News - HP demands Oracle resumes Itanium support

[HEXUS]

A formal letter opens the possibility of legal action.

Read more.

[[GSV]Trig]

Surely a formal letter?

[crossy]

It's hard to tell who, if anyone, is in the right on this. If Oracle has legal commitments then so be it, but both Microsoft and Red Hat have also pulled back from Itanium. Trends in the server market have shown steady growth in x86 market share, and ultimately Oracle is surely at liberty to develop its software how it wants.

Seems like an eminently sensible summary of the issues to me. Thanks ScottB!

However, there's more to this than meets the eye - there's also been rumblings on the DBA support forums that Oracle are not only pulling DB on HP/UX and RHEL5 on Itanium, but also for Suse and RHEL on x86. Comments along the lines of "my Oracle rep told me that I have to switch to OEL".

If this is the case (and it's here-say as far as I'm concerned) then fine, I can see Oracle's point in wanting someone to buy everything from them. But on the other hand, it's a bl**dy stupid thing to do - getting the purchase+support money for the app is better than getting none as folks move to someone less greedy. And if it is true, then you've got to wonder how much of an opportunity this is for IBM and their DB2 DB?

Just wish HP would wake up and realise that Itanium was a bad idea and switch to mainstream processors - I want to try HPUX under VirtualBox!

(Disclaimer: opinions expressed are my own)