Oracle complains about HP Itanium whingeing

ENTERPRISE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FIRM Oracle has hit back at a lawsuit from HP that complains about its plans to stop supporting servers running Intel's Itanium chip.

The argument is already pretty grubby, with both parties alleging that the other is privy to sensitive information that it is abusing, and now Oracle has flung some more mud and accused the maker of expensive printer ink of attention seeking.

In a court filing (PDF) filed in response to HP's complaint, Oracle let fly, saying, "This case is an abuse of the judicial process-a publicity stunt in a broader campaign to lay the blame on Oracle for the disruption that will occur when HP's Itanium-based server business inevitably comes to an end."

"HP untenably has put itself and thousands of customers out on the end of a very long limb because HP, almost alone now, clings to a decades old microprocessor architecture-Intel's Itanium chip line-that has no future. Intel has wanted to discontinue Itanium production for years, and HP knows it."

This is a retread of Oracle's earlier arguments, and perhaps rightly so, as this is all that this case is likely to involve - the sort of he said, she said argument that exposes what we all suspect is going on behind closed doors anyway. µ