HP, Intel plotted to keep Itanium processor alive: Oracle

Oracle Corp accused Hewlett-Packard C of "secretly" contracting with Intel Corp to keep Intel's Itanium microprocessor from being phased out, according to a court filing from Oracle in its long-running legal battle with HP over the Itanium platform.

According to Oracle's filing, HP and Intel forged a "contractual commitment" to keep Itanium going through the next two generations of microprocessors, despite HP's previous statements that Intel's decision to keep investing in Itanium was its own.

"HP has secretly contracted with Intel to keep churning out Itaniums so that HP can maintain the appearance that a dead microprocessor is alive," Oracle wrote. "The whole thing is a remake of Weekend at Bernie's."

HP spokesman Michael Thacker called the filing "nothing more than a desperate delay tactic designed to extend the paralyzing uncertainty in the marketplace created when Oracle announced in March 2011 - in clear break of contract - that it would no longer support HP's Itanium platform."

Intel declined to comment.

It's the latest salvo in a bitter lawsuit and countersuit between the two companies. In March, Oracle decided to discontinue its support for Itanium, a heavy-duty computing microprocessor, saying that Intel made it clear that the chip was nearing the end of its life and that Intel was shifting its focus to its x86 microprocessor.

HP called Oracle's decision "anti-customer," and sued Oracle in California state court in June.

In August, Oracle hit back with a countersuit against HP, accusing the company of concealing facts during its negotiation over the Itanium platform.
    Among the facts that HP is accused of concealing it was about to hire Leo Apotheker as its chief executive and Ray Lane as its chairman, according to the suit.

Other claims asserted by Oracle against HP include defamation and intentional interference with contractual relations.

Oracle launches SMB database appliance

Oracle has expanded its product offering - with a standalone, all-in-one appliance - in a fresh bid to woo small and medium businesses in India.

The company has launched a database appliance, targeting small and mid-size businesses that run both transactional and analytic applications. The appliance is a complete package of software, server, storage, and network.

It has been engineered for simplified deployment, maintenance, and support of database workloads. All hardware and software components are supported by Oracle itself, and offer customers pay-as-you-grow software licensing to scale from 4 processor cores to 24 processor cores without incurring the costs and downtime usually associated with hardware upgrades.

In addition, the database appliance brings the benefits of Oracle Exadata to entry-level systems offering SMBs to leverage Oracle solutions.

Kapil Sood, vice president, Systems Business, Oracle India said, "There is a big market below the Exadata quarter RAC that we were not tapping and we have a lot of customers who do not need all the power of Exadata RAC system. They've been asking for an engineered system to meet their requirements. Oracle Database Appliance will enable SMBs to simplify their IT infrastructure, keeping in mind the unique requirements of the sector."

The Oracle Database Appliance runs the similar software stack as found on Exadata, including the 11g database, RAC (Real Application Clusters) clustering software and Oracle Linux. It also features Appliance Manager software, which provides automatic monitoring and patching. The important feature is that it connects the support system in event of hardware failure.

"Simplicity, affordability and accessibility are the key features of Database Appliance, which will meet the requirements of the small and medium size customers," Sood said. He added that channel partners will drive the sales for this product in Asia-Pacific.

However, Oracle did not share how it will price the product, nor a specific time schedule for its availability. A company spokesperson said the pricing would be announced at the time of general availability of the product within a few days.

The product is targeted at customers who are running older hardware under their Oracle databases and want to make an upgrade.

Similar to Exadata, the Database Appliance is an engineered system combined with hardware and software for running the Oracle database. Redundancy is built in to all components and the Oracle appliance manager software reduces the risk and complexity of deploying highly available databases. It consolidates OLTP and datawarehousing databases up to 4 terabytes in size,