Oracle stop development on itanium

[Mel Burslan]

I think James just hot the nail on the head with the "dominance" comment.

Oracle, or more precisely, Larry Ellison, hates the idea of open source. The only reason, in my opinion of course, Oracle is going in Linux direction is, because they realize, they will not be able to stop that train running with such a momentum and they are taking a play from Mircosoft's play book, called "Embrace first, strangle slowly".

Otherwise, everything Oracle did so far points to the fact that, they try to be the "be-all, end-all" solution to any database need. They tried it with Oracle Disk Manager but could not succeed. Now that they have a closed source OS (Solaris) and hardware platform (Sparc) to go with it, there is no need for them to develop their product on other platforms.

This might as well be an indicative of things to come, like no more Oracle on any other HW/OS but manufactured and licensed by no other than Oracle itself.

One thing I am not sure is, this scheme Ellison is playing, may not hold water with regulatory authorities as it will stifle the competitive market forces.

I think we will see what the time will bring, soon. Living in very interesting times for sure...

[Hakki Aydin Ucar]

Hard days for Oracle on HP-UX customers.
I never shocked when I hear the news here, somehow I was waiting when it comes the Oracle's present trend.
my customer use informix on HP-UX servers now ,so no problem for now as others said here.
Alternatives, first wait what is going on now ,then benchmarking and consideration , and choosing alternatives..

[Ismail Azad]

Hi everyone,

I guess HP has hit back with a response after Oracle's decision using words like "inferior"..... Woh!....

Mark Payne, VP of business critical systems at HP EMEA told The INQUIRER "We are shocked that Oracle would put their customers' enterprises at risk. This is an effort to force customers to buy an inferior hardware platform and drive lock-in. This can only be interpreted as an act of desperation. HP remains committed to supporting our customers and their choices."

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2037203/hp-claims-oracle-servers-inferior-hardware

Adding to Alzhy ..... I sincerely hope the last itanic man standing {HPUX} stands "firm" for as long as it can!

Regards
Ismail Azad

[Alzhy]

Oracle - the Mega Stack.
Hardware/Software Complete.

Shame on the regulators! The anti-trust regulators should HAVE attached strict conditionalities on allowing the SUN acquisition.

This is really a low blow by Larry O. What now stops Oracle from stopping dvelopment of the Oracle stack of apps for say AIX/IBM? Potentially they CAN knowing they've got many customers literally by their b??lz!

Rah rah HP, continue with the Itanic march if Otellini really thinks INTEL can waste away $$$ on the chip's future!

Who knows - this may just start a bandwagon for alternative stacks like DB2, Websphere, Hadoop... Note also there are still non-Oracle stacks on the ERP market like SAP...

OR, HP could just accept the reality as Fujitsu and Hitachi already did -- shedding their Itanic Server line for good. He y HP still sells dozens of Prolaints per second anyway... and Focus on LINUX!

Cheers!

Maybe ITRCians should already plan Good Bye HP-UX Parties soon?

[Michael Mike Reaser]

Alzhy: Maybe ITRCians should already plan Good Bye HP-UX Parties soon?

This would be the second one for me in the past decade. I was first introduced to HP computers in the fall of 1979 via the HP3000 Series III which not only ran the entire administration of my University but was also used for academic purposes. I first worked on an HP9000 in the late 80's while I was at the Atlanta Response Center, and until my current job (RM COBOL on SUSE, woo!) I always used a 3000 and/or a 9000, running MPE(III/IV/V/VP/VE/VR/XL/iX) and/or HP-UX(3.0 through 11.11v1).

RIP HP3000, RIP it's "in-place replacement" the PA-RISC HP9000, and RIP the replacement's replacement Itanium. *Sigh*

[Tony Iams]

Hi all,

I am an analyst at the IT research firm Ideas International, and I am trying to assess the impact of Oracle's decision to stop supporting Itanium.

I created a poll asking which possible alternatives users might consider for the Oracle database on HP-UX:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QR69RTN

If you stop by, I will post the results in a few days.

Regards,

Tony Iams
Senior Analyst, System Software Research
Ideas International, Inc.
tonyi@ideasinternational.com

[TwoProc]

You can't stop Oracle from doing it... but I still hate it...

Apparently, it's "All aboard the Alzhy train with Oracle on Linux" ...

:-) :-( :-) :-(

Keep an eye on Alzhy's postings, he's already stepped in a lot of the holes that I feel we're soon destined to step in ourselves as well... :-) :-( :-) :-(

[TwoProc]

Tony - "Oracle on Linux" - not there?

[Shibin_2]

Though HP and Intel says, they will continue to support Itanium ( in fact Oracle too says, they will give support to existing customers ), the real pain is for HP only. Most ERP solutions with HP-UX, SAP utilizes Oracle DB.

SAP owns Sybase database. Whey they haven't tried an alternate on this yet? SAP could utilize their own DB and can dominant in ERP solutions (still they are) without an help. But something out there.

This strategy could have been expected an year ago, when Oracle tightened their agreement and contracts with those who own old SUN machines. It is a burden for those customers. Now, it is trying to boosting their business and beating others.

Competition is good, but it shouldn't be worsen for others.

HP has to come up with a quick solution. But do you think, Oracle will make some software for HP ? Definitely not. They are too far away from this now.

[Wim Rombauts]

My feeling of the last years is that Oracle has become a money-hungry monster that wants every last penny out of your pocket. To do that, it will do anything.
The only reason why some baseline products are cheap, is because there is similar cheap competition. Those costumers that heaily depend on the Oracle Database, need increasing bugdets to keep it running.

For instance : In the past, you could by new, faster hardware with faster processors and you could do more with the same number of licenses.
Now, with Oracle's per core licensing for Enterprise Edition products, it doesn't matter anymore to buy new hardware. If you need more work to be done, you have to seriously pay for aditional core licenses.

We are running Oracle on HP-UX for years, and I don't even care if HP or intel withhold information of an upcoming death of Itanium. If that would indeed be the case, it will be up to HP to tell the sour story to there costumers, and Oracle could have said : Come to us, we will help you.

I don't like the way Oracle moves. Am am *NOT* planning to move my Oracle database to another platform. What guarantee do I have that Oracle won't nail me to the wall with a next move ?
- Drop support for AIX ?
- Drastically increase support prices on non-Oracle Linux ?
If they can cold-bloodedly kill Oracle on HP-UX, you can expect anything, as long as you are willing to pay enough.

So, for our company, Oracle will be killed. We won't even run MySQL, because that's Oracle too.
We will go for IBM DB2 of EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL, but Oracle won't have us as a client for long.

[Wim Rombauts]

By the way, EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL seems to be quite confident about it's Oracle compatibility.
I wonder if HP and EnterpriseDB could cooperate to make it a real Oracle alternative. Something like OpenOffice to Microsoft Office.

[Prokopets]

And what about features and performance of EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL? Can you approximately say something like "postgresql has about 70% of oracledb's performance and 60% of features"? I'm not familiar with databases, that's why i'm asking.

Regards,
Philipp.

[Eric SAUBIGNAC]

Maybe it's finally time to forget Oracle ? To throw it straight to the dustbin ?

I can see that many end users are fed up with Oracle's licensing strategy, with their suspicious attitude against customers and finally their hegemony. But they still build custom applications around Oracle or mostly prefer ERP working with Oracle databases ...

The problem is that there is yet no alternative solution widely recognized. Everyone is doing it's small business in its corner and try to be THE Oracle's challenger.

A said by somes, could we imagine that IBM and HP are clever enough to build a strong aliance around DB2 ? Or will HP finally acquire SAP and SYBASE to be a 'one player' as Oracle want's to be :-( ? Will informix come back from the deaths ? Will god save the queen ?

More seriously, end-users, please : don't wait, just move. You can't accept anymore Oracle's attitue and YOU are doing the market.

Anyway, even if we are shocked, we had some signs before. Otherwise, how should we interpret the Exadata Database Machine ?

May be it's time for me to do a different job : wrought-iron work as I always dreamed about it, or why not chef or cabinet-maker ... ;-)

Eric

[Duncan Edmonstone]

> You can't stop Oracle from doing it... but I still hate it...

Ummm - you CAN stop it! As customers of Oracle many of you are quite within your rights to complain vociferously to your Oracle rep, and to demand this baffling decision is undone. Just shrugging your shoulders and moving on is the best way to ensure this does happen. If you care at all about staying working with HP-UX, you owe it to yourself to speak to your manager/CIO/CTO and get them talking to Oracle about this.

HTH

Duncan

[Duncan Edmonstone]

oh, and a quick history lesson...

last year Oracle withdrew support for Solaris/x86 on any hardware except their own Sun systems - customers complained strongly about it, and Oracle reversed their decision.

And the $ impact of that decision was much less than this one...

Duncan

[Wim Rombauts]

And for those who seek to spam Oracle, I found a mail address on an HP note about Oracl's decision :
gcp-customerfeedback_us@oracle.com

I found the link to this document on the HP-site in another thread about this issue, but I failed to find the thread now.

I have sent my mail already, and I tomd them that the way Oracle is behaving, I would rather split with Oracle than dropping HP-UX.
And mailing other Oracle contacts is a good idea too.
So if you feel for yourself thatyou have to complain ...

[Murat SULUHAN]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3xE4nsv8Ck&feature=player_embedded#at=31

Let's kick the Oracle :)

[Alzhy]

Ever since the million TPC X86 non-clustered results came out in 2009 - I have always anticipated a paradigm shift in Enterprise IT deployments. And that was our sign. Oracle Databases were the easiest to move and constitute the biggest chunk of our IT infrastructure - and so started our UNIX away adventure. Quad Socket (4 to 8 core) Systems and LINUX (or Solaris) simply beat out their RISC (Itanium and POWER) cousins on all aspects of TCO as well as newfound RAS.

Our UNIX-Away Project is almost complete - having moved about 80 TB of Oracle Databases from HP-UX to RHEL 5.X. The journey was smoothept lately when we moved to 11GR2 - but the issues was fixed practically quickly with help from Redhat Support (not from Oracle though). The result, lower licensing costs, smaller IT footprints (lower power and cooling reqs.).

What's killing Big UNIX and RISC/CISC platforms? LINUX my friends and the X86-64 platform that has made immense improvements over the last 3 years - that desite what others may say - RAS matches or even exceeds already their expensive RISC/CISC cousins! And it is LOWERING the cost of IT, seeding the CLOUD! And with Virtualization technologies like VMWARE, KVM and vBOX -- which adds HA cream and icing to the RAS features of such famed X86-64 platforms as the Prolaint DL DL 5,8,9XX, DELL R710 and IBM X5 Series and matching Blades from HP, IBM and CISCO - IT is no longer a no-brainer, no longer complex,, much more adaptive and on-demand. And most important of all - need not be costly administered by overpaid UNIX-centric Admins. ;*))

Really? Yes Really.

Let's give a round of applause to Dunnington, Nehalem. Opteron soon Bulldozer!

;^))

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Alzhy,

Still Oracle though?

And there's the problem...

You see if Oracle finds this business practice works, you can bet they do it again... I doubt they would actually drop support for Oracle on Linux/x86, but I can forsee something like:

i) Increase Oracle core factor for x86 cores from 0.5 to 1.0

ii) If you want to run Oracle on anything other than Solaris/SPARC or OEL/x86 on Oracle Tin, then your support costs are 2x because "we don't control the stack"

The problem here isn't HP-UX/Itanium, it's uncle Larry's plan to turn Oracle into the pre-1980 IBM - i.e. a monopolistic, anti-competitive monster...

my opinions - not necessarily those of my employer...

Duncan

[Tony Iams]

Getting interesting responses to the poll so far, keep them coming!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QR69RTN

TwoProc:
"Oracle on Linux" - not there?

I would consider that to be "Oracle on some other server platform (not Sun)"

Thanks,

Tony

[TwoProc]

I would like to say, that while I like Alzhy, and his help in the forums, and his excellent participation to date. I don't really agree with the last few sentences of his statement (two postings up). I've not met a lot of rich sysadmins(exactly none), and I don't believe it's non-complex, in fact with the sparse help available on some of these fronts and the smaller amount of system diagnostics on cheaper OSs and systems, it can often be even tougher to reach solutions when stuck.

These last few points remind me of how when we we're all going to object oriented code, how we'd all be using less complex, more robust, more reusable, cheaper and easier to maintain code for the masses, in which you'd hardly even need a programmer to do much of the coding much less have to fix any bugs, or anything else you can say bad about structured coding.

Anyway Alzhy, with some (but not all) of your last sentences, especially in tone, but also in message - I respectfully disagree.
No offense intended however, as I in general like and appreciate your contributions here, even if I don't always agree with them.

[Hakki Aydin Ucar]

Did you see this HP response portal ?

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/solutions/customers_first.html

[IS.Danil]

Oracle kicked HP beetwen legs, but this act will not diliver significant benefits to Oracle. Larry sawing a branch on which he seats with HP.
Now, it is good opportunity for for IBM, with their Power System, AIX, DB2.

When, Leo will buy SAP???
The SAP AG has own application suite with their Sybase RDMS.

[Kenan Erdey]

Hi,

i mailed oracle and they responded with this link.

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html

[Wim Rombauts]

That's there default reply it seems, because I got the same one.

I responded with a statement that the way Oracle doubles Enterprise Edition Licensing cost (without technical relevance) and then kills a platform, we cannot see Oracle anymore as a software partner we can trust.

As others already have said : What's their next move ? What's our next surprise ?
I would rather put some effort in a solution with less surprise.