Is HP Paying Intel To Keep Itanium Alive?

itwbennett writes "In a court filing, Oracle accused HP of secretly contracting with Intel to keep making Itanium processors so that it can continue to make money from its locked-in Itanium customers and take business away from Oracle's Sun servers. Oracle says that Intel would have long ago killed off Itanium if not for these payments from HP. For its part, HP called the filing a 'desperate delay tactic' in the lawsuit HP filed against Oracle over its decision to stop developing for Itanium."

Comments

Support

[CmdrPony]

I don't see what's wrong with this. HP is just making sure their existing customers are supported, even if it means making specific contracts with Intel directly. I'd be angry at HP if I bought an expensive server and they wouldn't support it.

Maybe Oracle should come up with better and faster servers so that they can win customers on their own merits?

Re:Support

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I completely agree. Itanium was a boondoggle years before it shipped. But if you were stupid enough to buy into all the marketing, at least HP hasn't just abandoned you. Better to have the choice to leave than to be pushed off. Besides, nowadays the Itaniums suck much less than the first couple of generations did.

Re:Support

[TWX]

It's probably more that Oracle doesn't want to support Itanium anymore, but I'm guessing that so long as Itanium is viable they're stuck supporting contracts that they have with HP. HP is in the middle of suing Oracle for their declared end of support for Itanium products. If Intel continues to make Itanium at HP's behest, that might leave Oracle on the spot.

Sucks to be Oracle's contracts department, but that's what happens when one doesn't write in a good escape clause. It probably legally doesn't really matter why Intel is still supporting the Itanium line, because I'd bet that Oracle never saw this one coming, but since Oracle is a third party to Intel and HP's business dealings as far as the contracts between the two, there's probably not a lot more than complaining that they can do.

HP-UX / Oracle / Itanium user here.

[attemptedgoalie]

I'm in the power industry. We have some applications that are only built in Solaris, HP-UX or AIX due to the underlying Cobol code, etc.

If we want to maintain certain regs, or have access to certain markets, we have to keep this particular app.

The day Oracle crapped on Itanium, we had to get HP in to tell us what the plan was as it would take us a few years to migrate to AIX if HP was really dumping it. (there is no way in hell we're running Oracle on a (now) Oracle operating system). Talk about vendor lock in. Woof.

Since then, I have been provided HP-UX and Itanium roadmaps for a ways out. (under NDA so no more details than that)

If Oracle wins on this, and really does dump UX, then I need to bring a bunch of AIX gear in and put a team of developers to work porting our custom code which means no optimization, no rewrites, no efficiency. All of our work to improve security, and kill off bugs will be wasted as we get it barely working in a new environment before we lose support. Just in case we get a nuclear project, etc.

The thought of training hundreds of people in a new system at multiple power plants and dozens of substations alone makes me nauseous. But if we screw up the migration process and wreck compliance, we could be out of business as the fines are incredible.

I'll bet half of this could have been avoided if when Hurd was found screwing around at HP, they could have just had him executed. Then he wouldn't be at Oracle and probably influencing this situation quite a bit.