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HP vs. Oracle: The row gets dirtier

In one of the dirtiest tech row, Hewlett-Packard has taken its friend-turned-foe Oracle to court for hurting its enterprise business. Oracle has dropped support for HP’s Itanium servers, saying that the servers have no future. Oracle is also suspicious that Intel will soon kill off the processor.

HP and Oracle, once best pals, are at loggerheads now. HP has dubbed Oracle's allegations as malicious and fake and claims that ever since Oracle has violated some contractual commitments. HP has further accused Oracle of increasing the price of its software for Itanium servers.

On June 8, HP in a letter to Oracle’s Co-President and Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz demanded proper acknowledgement from Oracle towards its commitments to HP and to Itanium. HP is the main user of Itanium chips in servers sold to run large enterprises databases and other challenging computing tasks, after jointly developing the chip with Intel.

From HP’s part, it has taken a right step considering it wanted to protect the investments and trust of some 140,000 shared Oracle-HP customers.

Oracle, however, is certain about the end-of-life plans for Itanium and claims that HP knew all about it before they signed the contract. But, Intel has denied any intention of killing Itanium development, indicating to a new chip, codenamed Poulson.

The relationship between HP and Oracle has definitely hit a rocky patch. Earlier also HP was miffed when its former CEO and Chairman Mark Hurd switched loyalties to become Co-President at Oracle. HP believed that Hurd also took the company’s secrets with him.

Oracle has boarded a risky path. It is clearly having difficulty making its Sun acquisition work and it appears that it wants to cover up the problem as immediate as possible. And for this, it is making severe strategic errors that are putting its customers at increased risk in terms of higher charges and forced migrations. HP in its filing has dubbed the migrations as an illegal attempt.

In this catfight among two tech rivals, customers are the biggest sufferers. Those who want to continue to use the HP-UX and VMS operating systems now doubt HP’s plans for Itanium. Moreover, Oracle’s anti-customers action has worsened the situation. By forcing consumers to shift to its own software, even if they don’t wish to and refusing to fix bugs, it has made the life of 140,000 HP Oracle users miserable and uncertain.

For the sake of customers, Oracle and HP must bury the differences pretty soon. Otherwise, consumers will start looking for options with more certainty.

Anupriya Tripathi/ITVoir NewsDesk

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