Oracle dumps Itanium; HP, Intel express shock

NEW DELHI, INDIA: HP announced that it will continue to develop Itanium-based Integrity server platforms with its HP-UX operating system for the next 10 years.

Moreover, HP will continue to support customers running existing versions of Oracle software on Itanium-based Integrity servers, both existing and future platforms, during the same timeframe.

Also Read: Microsoft says RIP to Itanium 

“Oracle continues to show a pattern of anti-customer behaviour as they move to shore up their failing Sun server business,” said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP. “HP believes in fair and honest competition. Competition is good for customers, innovation and the marketplace. We are shocked that Oracle would put enterprises and governments at risk while costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity in a shameless gambit to limit fair competition.”

In a direct contradiction to a statement made yesterday by Oracle, Paul Otellini, president and chief executive officer, Intel Corporation said, “Intel’s work on Intel Itanium processors and platforms continues unabated with multiple generations of chips currently in development and on schedule. We remain firmly committed to delivering a competitive, multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture.” 

Poulson is Intel’s next-generation 32-nm, 8-core-based Itanium chip, and is on track to more than double the performance of the existing Tukwila architecture. Kittson is an officially committed roadmap product for Itanium beyond Poulson and also is in active development. Intel Itanium processor industry momentum will be highlighted in a keynote at the upcoming Beijing Intel Developer’s Forum.

As per the company, HP moved ahead into second position in the Unix market while Sun lost share and fell back into third since Oracle announced it would acquire Sun in April of 2009. It is clear that Oracle customers are voting with their purchasing decisions against the Sun platform. This latest Oracle action of disinformation is clearly an attempt to force customers into purchasing Sun servers in a desperate move to slow their declining market share, adds HP..