HP is suing Oracle over Itanium chip server shut-out

FLOGGER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP is suing Oracle because it said it will stop supporting HP's servers that use Intel's Itanium chip.

The complaint centres around Oracle's decision to cease supporting HP Itanium servers in its database software, because it had heard that the chip will be phased out.

HP argues that Oracle's decision will hurt its clients, because presumably they would like to run Oracle software on its servers, while Oracle has rubbished HP's claims.

This is the latest in a continuing series of tit-for-tat exchanges between these two US information technology giants that was not helped when Mark Hurd, the expenses fudging ladies man, left HP in a cloud of severance pay and joined Oracle after Larry Ellison decided to defend him.

This kicked off a round of legal actions that probably lowered both firms' bottom lines and no doubt put some lawyers into expensive sports cars.

Oracle has hit back at the lawsuit and said that HP is well aware that Itanium is on its way out, and that it is being unreasonable and untruthful.

"Today HP filed a lawsuit claiming that Oracle had breached an agreement to support the Itanium microprocessor. It just takes a few minutes to read the early drafts of the agreement to prove that HP's claim is not true," it said.

Oracle claims that HP knew about Itanium prospects a good six months before it found out about it.

"It is interesting, however, that way back in September of 2010, HP asked Oracle for a long-term commitment to support Itanium," the statement continues. "At that time Oracle did not know that there was a plan already in place to end Itanium's life. Oracle did not learn about that plan until six months later, in March 2011."

Oracle has accused HP of asking it to guarantee long term support for Itanium with the prior knowledge that Intel would be discontinuing it. "HP was concerned about what would happen when Oracle found out about that plan," it added, fingering Ray Lane and Leo Apotheker for their actions.

"What we know for certain is that Ray Lane and HP's current board members and Leo Apotheker and HP's current management team now know full well that Intel has plans in place to end-of-life of the Itanium microprocessor. Knowing this, HP issued numerous public statements in an attempt to mislead and deceive their customers and shareholders into believing that these plans to end-of-life Itanium do not exist," it added.

"But they do. Intel's plans to end-of-life Itanium will be revealed in court now that HP has filed this utterly malicious and meritless lawsuit against Oracle." µ