Oracle Happenings

Oracle Corp. announces new servers and prepares for the Solaris 11 launch by dropping support for old iron. Meanwhile the battle between Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and Oracle escalates as HP fights back against Oracle's discontinuance of support for its Itanium processors by filing a lawsuit.

Focal Points:

• Even though Oracle is dropping out of some server markets, it is not abandoning all of the x86 platforms. It is especially committed to those that support its Exadata database appliances and Exalogic cloud servers. Thus, Oracle announced the new Sun Fire X4470 M2 with a number of options. The new processor is a four-socket server that uses Intel Corp.'s latest "Westmere-EX" Xeon E7 processors. The X4470 M2 is a 3U rack server that comes with either two or four Xeon E7s and has 16 memory slots per CPU socket, for a total of 64 slots. The server supports 4 GB, 8 GB, and 16 GB memory sticks, with a maximum capacity of 1 TB of memory. On the software front, the new Sun Fire supports Solaris 10, Oracle's variant of Red Hat Inc.'s Enterprise Linux (Oracle Linux 5.5), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 and 6.0, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Server 2008 R2. The server also supports virtualization through Oracle's Xen implementation, Oracle VM 2.2.1 or VMware Inc.'s ESXi hypervisor. The entry price for a base configuration costs $12,020.
• Rumors have it that Oracle will release the long-awaited Solaris 11 in the course of the next few months. In advance of the announcement, Oracle has released an end-of-life notice that it would not carry forward support for a number of older SPARC-based servers. According to the Oracle notice, Solaris 11 drops support for machines using UltraSparc-I, UltraSparc-II, UltraSparc-IIe, UltraSparc-III, UltraSparc-III+, UltraSparc-IIIi, UltraSparc-IV, and UltraSparc-IV+ processors. Interestingly, the Solaris 11 Express release, which has been out since Nov. 2010, does support these processors. Solaris 10, which will be available and supported through 2013, will continue to available for use on these engines. 
• In March 2011 Oracle announced it would no longer enable its latest software to run on HP's flagship Itanium-based Integrity line of servers. HP has retaliated by initiating a lawsuit alleging Oracle breached its contractual commitments and promises of continuing support to customers. HP also claims Oracle engaged in a series of tactics designed to force customers to shift from HP's Integrity server hardware to Oracle's own server platform. HP asserts that when customers complained about critical bugs in existing Oracle software, the software vendor refused to provide support and demanded instead that companies upgrade to the next version of its software, which will not run on the Integrity machines. Amongst other relief, HP is asking the court to compel Oracle to enforce its implied contract to support existing Integrity servers with its existing software, including bug fixes, as outlined in its March statements to customers. HP is also seeking direct and consequential damages for lost profits, costs of mitigation, loss of goodwill, and damage to its reputation. Oracle contends HP is being dishonest with its customers over the Itanium processor line and that Intel intends to sunset Itanium microprocessors in favor of the Xeon microprocessor family.   

Experton Group believes Oracle is working overtime to reshape the landscape to support its workload-optimized solution strategy and to eliminate competition for any of the components in the hardware/software solution stack. Oracle has traditionally played hardball and is doing so once again against HP and customers running old iron. As Oracle co-president Mark Hurd stated recently the company wants to sell fewer systems at higher prices and higher margins. Eliminating competition and forcing customers to upgrade to new hardware platforms helps with that goal. IT executives moving forward with Oracle offerings should understand Oracle's overarching strategy, develop its own strategy for engaging with Oracle and using its products, and be prepared for tough negotiations with Oracle if the corporate plan is at variance with Oracle's. Just in case, there should always be a Plan B.