HP Users Urge Oracle to Continue Intel Itanium Support

Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community is the latest group urging Oracle executives to reconsider their decision to discontinue support for Intel’s Itanium platform.

In a statement released April 13, the board of directors of the HP user group Connect said it would continue to support HP and Oracle customers running applications on Itanium-based systems despite Oracle’s March 22 decision. Oracle executives, saying it was clear that Intel would continue to expand the Xeon processor line and start phasing out its controversial Itanium chips, said they would no longer develop software for Itanium.

HP quickly reacted, saying Oracle’s decision was a cynical move designed to bolster its own struggling SPARC/Solaris hardware business—which Oracle gained when it acquired Sun Microsystems last year for $7.4 billion—at the expense of its software customers. Some analysts have said that at least half all Itanium systems run Oracle software.

Leaders of the Connect group said Oracle’s move has enraged much of its membership. In a video blog, Chris Koppe, president of the Connect board, said that in his 25 years as an HP user, nothing has affected the group membership more than Oracle’s Itanium decision.

“In a time of economic challenge, it’s unconscionable for any company, much less a company like Oracle, to cause such hardship on its customers,” Koppe said.

“A large contingency of our community is made up of users running HP-UX and OpenVMS on Integrity servers. They are clearly disturbed by Oracle’s decision to stop developing applications for Intel Itanium processors and really hope Oracle will reconsider its decision,” Nina Buik, chief marketing officer at Connect, said in a statement. “HP and Oracle customers are now going to have to adjust their business plans and rethink future investments.”

Oracle executives said they were making the move in the best interest of their customers. In doing so, Oracle joined Microsoft and Red Hat in becoming the third major software maker over the past two years to stop developing for Itanium. Oracle’s move angered both Intel and HP. In a statement the day of Oracle’s decision, David Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager of HP’s Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking business, blasted the move as “anti-customer.”

For more, read the eWEEK article: HP Users Push Oracle to Reverse Itanium Decision.