infoTECH Feature

June 16, 2011

HP Files Lawsuit against Oracle over Chip-Related Issue

It comes as no surprise that HP decided to file a lawsuit against Oracle (News - Alert) this week after it recently sent a harshly-worded letter to the company.

The two companies have squabbling over Oracle stopping the development of software for Itanium chip technology that is manufactured by Intel (News - Alert).

In the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Santa Clara County, Calif., court, HP alleges Oracle was breaking “legally-binding commitments” and is trying to steal the other company’s customers, according to a report from The AFP.

“We believe that this is an unlawful attempt to force customers from HP Itanium platforms to Oracle’s own platforms,” HP said in a statement quoted by AFP. “We will take whatever legal actions are available to us necessary to protect our customers’ best interests and the significant investments they have made.”

In the lawsuit, HP also alleges Oracle uses “strong-arm tactics to coerce customers into replacing their HP servers with Sun servers they do not want,” according to a report carried on TMCnet.

“This case arises out of Oracle’s failure to live up to a clear and simple promise to work with HP in the interests of both companies’ mutual customers,” the lawsuit adds. “In a mere eight months, Oracle has gone from arm-in-arm ‘partnership’ with Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert) to bitter antagonist.”

Oracle came out with its own statement against HP, which says in part, “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.” Lane is HP chairman and Apotheker is HP CEO.

“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.

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,” the Oracle company statement adds.

There are over 140,000 shared HP-Oracle customers, TMCnet reports.

“HP remains committed to a long-term mission-critical server roadmap, including Intel’s Itanium processor,” HP said in its statement. “Similarly, Intel has repeatedly reinforced its ongoing commitment to the Itanium roadmap.”

In addition, HP said that no longer developing the software would hurt customers and would result in “hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity,” Bloomberg (News - Alert) News said, according to a report carried on TMCnet.

HP is seeking damages and the court to order Oracle not to pull support from Itanium computers, according to media reports.

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Ed Silverstein is a TMCnet contributor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell
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