Oracle stop development on itanium

[Turgay Cavdar]

Hi all,
Oracle has announced that they will stop development for itanium:
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/346696

So anyone knows the HP's strategy?
Any porting plan for hp-ux?

[Kenan Erdey · Accepted solution]

i think everbody is shocked or gone out for a new job :)

i wonder what hp will do in their unix market although itanium and hp-ux roadmap has been published ?

[Prokopets]

I don't think that hp will port hp-ux. It will take too much time (while Solaris is already ported) and Xeon has no RAS features as in Itanium. So... The situation is not good for Itanium and hp-ux, i think.

Philipp.

[Mel Burslan]

This was kinda-sorta expected, after Ellison took control of a hardware platform like Sun and invested heavily in Linux open source, marketing a derivative of RHEL under Oracle licensing.

On the other hand, if you look at the picture financially, Integrity servers are not selling like hotcakes. And as far as the currently manufactured hardware goes, HPUX runs only on Integrity. So, Oracle, has no incentive to develop their software for a customer base which is already shrinking.

I am waiting for the end-of-life announcement for HP-UX any day now. There hasn't been much innovation on the OS side since 11.11 other than some superfluous additions that I can live without or some hardware dependent changes to accommodate ia64 architecture. The way the things are going, our beloved HP-UX will not be around much longer either, which reinforces Oracle's decision, not to develop for Integrity.

Is anyone really surprised ? I personally am not...

[Alzhy]

HP-UX - The Last Itanic Man Standing!

So the 3 Bllion$ Intel "play" -- after all is said and done - could still be break even for HP.

So what remains on Itanium - VMS, Tandem/Himalaya. I am pretty sure though even the i2 Itanic systems will be around for the next 4 to 8 years.

[Steven E. Protter]

My take is HP ports the OS or it dies.

Oracle is doing this in hopes of driving business to SPARC and Oracle Linux.

The current xeon offering from Intel have more and more Itanium 2 features.

I believe it would be technically possible for HP to make the move, though they clearly do not want to.

SEP

[butti]

I hope on a fast official statement from HP.
It will be very important for further strategy (without oracle support > No Itanium Server > No HP-UX)
I thing many customers will stop or wait their order?!

[Prokopets]

It's quite interesting if Intel is going to do some "counterstrike". As far as i can see, customers are buying Itaniums for Oracle DB in most cases, so Oracle's démarche hits Intel too.
Anyway, the situation with hp-ux and Itanium became very interesting now. I've already prepared a popcorn bundle :)

[Jan van den Ende]

Well,

the In the early 1990's Gartner et al. declared VMS "gone within 5 years".
And (consequently?) DEC/Compaq/HP did their best to make that prophesy self-fullfilling.
Anyone recall ANY VMS marketing since then?

After the "Alphacide" of 2001 Engineering made a MAGNIFICENT effort to port to the (then) Merced, and they got it going. Within hardly 5 years AFTER killing off Alpha, some (now named) Itanium systems reached the point where they matched __5 YEARS OLDER__ Alpha systems.

... and VMS is still amongst us.

If past results have any predictive power, AND HPUX client base is as resilient as that of VMS,
then it may be a bit early for dispair.

But I fully agree, it IS a bad sign.

By the way, does anybody have any info about Rdb/DBMS/(native)Oracle on OpenVMS-on-Itanium?

To steal a C.O.V.signature:
"I am not a pessimist, I am a realist".

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Torsten.]

Oracle said yesterday "... Intel management made it clear that their strategic focus is on their x86 microprocessor and that Itanium was nearing the end of its life."

But Intel answers today:
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/03/23/chip-shot-intel-reaffirms-commitment-to-itanium

see also

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/hp-calls-oracle-s-itanium-move-a-shameless-gambit-to-hamper-competition.html


IMHO "Itanium" in this case means HP-UX only.

There are many comments on the web about the HP-Oracle relationship, for example:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Oracles-Masterful-Political-Obfuscation-Strategy-Against-HP-71140.html

[Alzhy]

Oracle deployments on HP-UX are pretty substantial. Oracle should still be comitted their existing Itanium deployments until kingdom come. That will likely be 4 to 8 years or more down the line until the next tech refresh.

This will simply mean customers will no longer be able to have Oracle's latest and greatest, will be forced to sign up for platinum support contracts and will think twice about their next tech cycle refresh.

HP-UX and RISC/Itanic Sales our of Enterprise Systems is likely no more than 8 persent of total systems sales -- so this should not be a big deal IHO for HP.

Besides - there are other non-Oracle DB, ERP and Enterprise software available for HP-UX Itanium.

My Crystal Ball However Says:

- HP will acquire AMD and beef up Bulldozer and successors
- HP will explore a port of HP-UX to X86-64

HP can't survive as one of the big 3 without its own flagship chip that it designs and builds.

[Alzhy]

First there was Micsosoft annoucing end of support for Itanium for Windows Server.

Then Redhat, RHEL 6.0 is NOT supported on Itanium systems.

And finally, Oracle software...

So what does INTEL expect to run on the Itanium? Will HP-UX have the necessary ISV support in the long haul since ORACLE is practically the mega-stack end to end from DB, mid-tier to web tier...

[Michael Mike Reaser]

Isn't this, in short and in essence, Mark Hurd extending a single finger (and *not* E.T.'s index finger) in HP's general direction?

[Alzhy]

LOL!

Exactly.

[Steven E. Protter]

Lets be blunt here.

Oracle is attempting to bring the Proprietary Unix DB onto their own SPARC hardware platform, which they have pretty much killed with their typical customer service.

Intel and HP can talk until they are blue in the face about commitment to the Itanium Platform. It doesn't matter. Many, many large businesses run Oracle on HP-UX because of RAS

Reliability
Availability
Scalability

It scales so well in fact Oracle refused to let HP publish the latest Oracle Benchmark tests because it made their own hardware look bad.

There are anti trust implications to this decision, it could be viewed as an effort to suppress competition.

Lets say HP ports HP-UX to x86 hardware. Does that mean Oracle will provide a database that will run on the platform? Probably not because Oracle ignored the customer wishes in a hardball attempt to get back market share that they have lost.

HP could respond with a counter option. mysql is Enterpise grade, runs very well on HP-UX. What if they went into the software business and offered their customers a roadmap.

State of the art hardware plus a database platform that has much lower cost of ownership than Oracle. Oracle may own the mysql product but its open source and HP could release its own version in about give minutes.

SEP

[Jan van den Ende]

Yeah,

>>>
It scales so well in fact Oracle refused to let HP publish the latest Oracle Benchmark tests because it made their own hardware look bad.
<<<

What is new here...

For years, Rdb on VMS on Alpha beat Oracle's ANY *NIX bechmarks by 30 - 60 %, but never got published.
Look it up:
Oracle on xx hardwre on yy-Nix had new record zz.
Next month: Oracle holds record of zz+ 30-60 %. No details. THOSE were Rdb (owned by, but not originally from Oracle) on Alpha VMS clusters.

Like I said before: deja vu.

Sad story really.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[butti]

Here is HP first answer.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110323c.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news

I can't do anything with Itanium (Hp-UX) without support from Oracle.
Oracle Support from HP is not the same :-(

But what shall HP say else

[Shibin_2]

To spice up Oracle's hardware, new strategy. HP has to come up with some solution. But real benefit in this cold war, could go IBM's hardware and AIX.

[Pete Randall]

Or what about Informix? Oracle is not the only DB product out there folks. Of course that means you're jumping into bed with IBM, but, at least so far I haven't heard any rumors about lack of IBM/Informix development/support for Itanium.


Pete

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

And the following day, Oracle announces a new TPC-H world record on Sparc Enterprise M9000 server.
So itanium is about to go.
follow the lead and purchase a brand new M9000 !

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/346700

my 2 cents !

Regards
Jean-Luc

[Doug Burton]

I would really hate to see HP-UX go. Hope it gets ported.

[Torsten.]

Porting HP-UX away from Itanium is not a solution, since the message simply means "no oracle for hp-ux" - no matter on what kind of platform... :-(

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

> Torsten: Porting HP-UX away from Itanium is not a solution, since the message simply means "no oracle for hp-ux" - no matter on what kind of platform.

I have to agree with Torsten. Oracle is all about dominance and not coexistence. That said, despite Intel's responses, one has to wonder if an HP-UX running on x86 hardware might not help ensure its footprint in the computing ecosystem of tomorrow.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Torsten.]

Also good links:

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/enderle/oracle-tries-to-beat-itanium-to-death-with-a-fud-stick/?cs=46116

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/24/oracle_hp_ux_itanium_analysis/

[Prokopets]

Theoretically, there's some steps that can HP do:

1. Asymmetric - start to port and work out on PostgreSQL on hp-ux. It may be difficult because of license (as far as i know, you cannot just buy PostgreSQL) and the main problem is the conservatism of enterprise customers. I just cannot imagine how to explain OracleDB guru that HP's PostgreSQL is not worse. And one more problem - time.

2. Very asymmetric - start to co-develop with Intel some kind of Superdome built on Xeon processors. That can be done with RedHat and this triumvirate, i think, could be viable. And beside of it, this "chimera", won't be locked on one DB vendor.

regards,
Philipp.