If you’re one of the many Enterprise users that have Itanium based business critical servers in your data centre then I’m sure that the following announcement isn’t news to you, but I’ll say it again for the benefit of the rest of the class:
MARCH 22nd 2011 – Oracle Stops All Software Development For Intel Itanium Microprocessor
With Red Hat having withdrawn future development for Itanium (although this was met with little more than a shrug of the shoulders from the IT community) and Microsoft announcing that extended support for Server 2008 will end July 2018, maybe this shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. However it feels like a bit of a dirty tactic by Oracle and a slap in the face to many users. With their own hardware sales nose-diving throughout 2010, this seems like stage 1 in forcing Oracle’s large software audience buy their hardware.
The official reasons for withdrawal seem a little shaky as well. Oracle have stated that it will stop developing software for Itanium-based servers because the processor is “nearing the end of its life”. This statement cannot have been based on any facts or direct communications as Intel immediately responded to this statement by declaring “work on Intel Itanium processors and platforms continues unabated with multiple generations of chips currently in development and on schedule”. So what was the genuine reason?
While Itanium uptake has been disappointing for Intel and arguments could be made for discontinuing software development in a technology that truly WAS approaching it’s end of life, what Oracle really seem to have decided is to withdraw their product from a competitors platform and issued an ultimatum to it’s software customers – spend serious money moving your business critical applications off Itanium or use old software. HP have gone on record as saying that “Oracle continues to show a pattern of anti-customer behaviour as they move to shore up their failing Sun server business”, and it’s hard to disagree.
I know that Oracle aren’t actually stipulating that you will have to use their hardware, but it seems obvious that this is their hope. And don’t think you’ll always be safe if you don’t use Itanium. If this is a successful gambit and generates £millions in new business critical server sales, what’s to stop IBM POWER being next to have development withdrawn or AMD or Intel! After all, based on this latest announcement from Oracle, it’s not like the users will have a choice…
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