Oracle-HP Trial Will Trace an Ill-fated Partnership - hurstdreir1946

After Oracle and Hewlett-Packard enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership in enterprise IT, it's conniving to find anything that hasn't gone wrong with their kinship finished the past two days.

On Monday, the companies are set to set up into gap arguments in a trial in Santa Clara Crack Court in San Jose that's likely to include accusations of lying, betrayal, forsaking, scheming and defamation. HP will indicate that Prophet breached a contract 'tween the two companies by quitting development for HP's Wholeness servers, based on its Itanium chip computer architecture. Oracle charges that Itanium is dying and HP is lying about its impending death. Some soaring-profile witnesses may be called to the stand, with testimony protrusive off next hebdomad with Ann Livermore, the former head of HP's enterprisingness business and nonmoving a member of its instrument panel.

The argufy centers on hardware and computer software for the most stern workloads in the largest of enterprises. HP and Intel developed the Itanium mainframe architecture to a higher degree a decade agone, expression it would bring home the bacon for high public presentation, reliability and availableness than the industry-standard x86 program could render. It has proved wellspring clothed for the big databases that are Oracle's specialty, according to Pund-IT analyst Charles King. But Itanium hasn't ready-made many inroads into the waiter industriousness on the far side H.P., and having Oracle by its side with business-critical software that would range happening the platform was of the essence, he said.

"H.P., for some years, was an extremely ending better hal of Oracle's," King said.

Oracle and HP whitethorn have been set along a collision course as soon as the acquisitive software giant decided to buy Insolate Microsystems, long a technically advanced merely struggling server maker, in January 2010. A sudden move into the hardware business was bound to modification Oracle's relationships with the companies that ready-made servers to run its software. But in the case of HP, other factors combined to create a vapourific compounding.

After HP fired CEO Mark Hurd in August 2010 over a outrage involving his relationship with a other contractor, Hurd united Oracle American Samoa co-United States President just a month subsequent. That led HP to sue Hurd, accusing him of breaching a confidentiality agreement and quest to block him from working for Oracle. The two companies rapidly negotiated a carry on in which HP born its suit against Hurd and the companies reaffirmed their partnership.

But instead of last down, the press soon heated ahead. In March 2011, Oracle announced IT would give up wholly software development for Itanium. Though Microsoft and Red Hat Software had made like decisions already, Oracle is a more important software provider for the Wholeness servers, which run HP's version of Unix, known as HP/Uxor. In a press release, Oracle aforesaid it had reached the decision supported happening information from Intel that the Itanium line was existence phased verboten. HP and Intel denied they were planning to stop the Itanium line. In other release the next daylight, Oracle said HP had known Itanium was nearing the end of its life and unbroken that entropy from its customers.

That's when HP filed the suit beingness heard adjacent calendar week. It wants a court to declare that the so-called Hurd Agreement reached in September 2010 is a binding contract and that Seer breached it by dropping Itanium development. HP also accused Oracle of libel and defamation, saying the company lied when IT aforesaid that Intel was planning to kill Itanium. HP said Prophesier was pulling developing from Itanium in a invite to pull customers over to its own hardware, which came from the Sunbathe acquisition.

Prophesier countersued, saying HP had deceived it regarding the in store of Itanium and hid the fact that the platform was on the outlet. Oracle called the Hurd Agreement a bare "corporate hug," and said it by design did non negotiate a binding commitment to Itanium development. It wants the Hurd Agreement to be scrapped. Oracle also ready-made a defamation charge of its personal, locution that HP's allegations were false and hurt its reputation.

Prophesier besides said HP was inculpatory of fraudulence for holding dorsum information while negotiating the Hurd Agreement. Among the facts Oracle says HP hid during the talks in 2010 was that the company was planning to take two executives who would be dead-set against Prophesier. Soon after the bargain was signed, HP picked as its radical CEO Leo Apotheker, who LED German software package God Almighty SAP when a division of that ship's company illegally downloaded information from Oracle's website. In plus, HP employed Ray Lane, a early Prophet executive who had clashed with Seer President Larry Ellison years earlier, as not-executive chairman. Lane is now executive chairman, while Meg Whitman has replaced Apotheker as CEO.

Some companies say they have their grassroots customers' interests at heart and that the other side is hurting those users. But the dispute itself is probably pain customers more whatever finding of fact could hurt either company, Pund-IT's King said. While vendors want to push their own products, enterprise Information technology executives get their own agenda.

"What they're really look for is predictability. Not lone predictability of the systems that they use, but predictable behavior along the part of the trustworthy vendors that they work with," Male monarch said.

Now that the feud has gone this right, there may be no good outcome for anyone, helium said.

"Even if a suit found for one company or the other — or, in peculiar, if it found for HP — you accept to wonder about how priceless a relationship that Oracle was forced plunk for into would very make up for both companies."

Stephen Lawson covers racy, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail computer address is stephen_lawson@idg.com