Oracle stops development for Intel Itanium

[Former Member]

Hey there

It looks like Oracle is no longer supporting the IA64 platform in future. This primarily targets HP, as it is the last major supporter for IA64. Here are a few statements:

Oracle

[Oracle Stops All Software Development For Intel Itanium Microprocessor|http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/346696]

HP

[HP Supports Customers Despite Oracleu2019s Anti-customer Actions|http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110323c.html]

[Oracle stop development on itanium|http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1474396&admit=109447626130103872067028353475]

In my opinion this cannot be good for either party, because HP and Oracle were quite a succesful setup in the past. What do you think?

Regards, Michael

Edit: I wonder if there will be an official statement from SAP. As far as i know SAP/Oracle on IA64 is one of the major platforms for large enterprise installations.

Bonus question: To what database/platform would you migrate to, if you had to choose one at this very moment?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yes the early SAP customer base back in the 90s early 00s was primarily HP/Oracle.

Personally if I wanted to stay in the big Iron area I'd go for DB/2 either stay on HP or go to AIXon the backend with x86/Linux for the app server layer.

This could be a good opportunity for SAP however given that they now own sybase. Relase SAP on sybase

as a much lower license cost, create some really easy to use migration tools (not that the existing ones are that bad).

Alternativly I could see an SAP/HP merger but for that to happen Leo Apoteker would have to go at HP

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Relase SAP on sybase

Is SAP really planning this? I have never heard of anything like it so far. I thought SAP bought Sybase for their mobile business and to maybe use it with HANA... but whoa you are right:

[blog: A Deeper Look At Sybase|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/24051] [original link is broken] [original link is broken] [original link is broken];

first, there is 'Adaptive Server Enterprise', or 'ASE' as it's usually called. ASE is Sybase's flagship OLTP database; SAP Business Suite is currently being ported to run on ASE and you'll hear more about that later in 2011.

Funny at my old work place we used to have a lot of Sybase databases... on Sun Solaris

By the way here is a poll from the hp forum attended by their unix admins: [HP-UX at Crossroads as Oracle Ceases Development for Itanium|http://ow.ly/4oKDh]

Cheers Michael

[Former Member]

Court decides Oracle has to offer its future products for the IA64 platform due to valid contracts with HP:

HP Wins Court Ruling in Itanium Litigation

Cheers Michael

[Former Member]

Basically the announcement just says there won't be Oracle 12 on HP-UX/Itanium.

For Oracle 10g and Oracle 11g there is no change at all:

Oracle 10g (inkl. RAC): End of Extended Support Jul 30, 2013

Oracle 10g (inkl. RAC): End of Sustaining Support: Indefinite

Oracle 11g (inkl. RAC): End of Extended Support Jan 30, 2018

Oracle 11g (inkl. RAC): End of Sustaining Support: Indefinite

Given the fact I can still see some installations of Oracle 8i with

old SAP releases, this is just some early announcement from Oracle.

I don't think Oracle can pull the HP-UX customers to Solaris, they

will more likely migrate to Linux (and maybe NewDB).

Regards,

Mark

[markus_doehr2]

> Basically the announcement just says there won't be Oracle 12 on HP-UX/Itanium.

The announcement says that there won't be ANY new software from Oracle on IA64; this includes all other products too aside from the database engine itself (such as Peoplesoft, JDE, (former) BEA, Oracle Applications, Siebel etc.). Also Windows IA64 and Linux IA64 are no more supported (having been a niche anyway).

But you're correct, for SAP customers currently on a supported platform on IA64 a decision on how to proceed will not be imminent 2018.

Markus

[Former Member]

Well but consider that those "big iron" boxes are to be bought usually for 5 years, you cannot pay the elevated maintenace fees after that. So customers really do have to consider the platform to invest from now on. Of course nothing really changed since last week and won't for the next 3 years. But customers have to work on their midterm strategy, and it kind of looks like it will not involve any itanium boxes.

And @Markus: thanks for your first post on linux/maxdb, i totally agree that this is a very good option for SAP customers at present.

Here one more (german) article: Itanium-Stopp: Die Folgen für SAP-Kunden

And here is the official list of products on itanium from oracle: Oracle products on Itanium

Cheers Michael

[markus_doehr2]

...and now there's a note with a SAP statement on that topic:

Note 1575609 - Future HPUX support for SAP on Oracle databases

Markus

[Former Member]

[Another Lawsuit Lurking?|http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20110608230551_HP_Threatens_to_Sue_Oracle_for_Ceasing_Intel_Itanium_Support.html]

Leo A. using Oracle as money laundering station...

Update june 20th: [HPu2019s Demand Letter and Oracle's Cover-up Costs|http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/enderle/hp-s-demand-letter-and-oracles-cover-up-costs/?cs=47328]

[former_member266290]

yes, there is another lawsuit : [HP sues Oracle over Itanium support|http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/230396/hp_sues_oracle_over_dropped_itanium_support.html]

[markus_doehr2]

We were and are using on almost all (> 98 %) of our systems MaxDB/SAPDB/ADABAS, there are a few small and development systems on other databases but our main ERP, BW and CRM all run on MaxDB (ERP 3+ TB).

In our early days of 64bit we bought several Integrity machines from HP and ran Linux IA64 on them (no HP-UX), this was just shortly before x86_64 came into place. New machines were from that point all x86_64 which far outperformed the Itanium boxes, even those of the same "generation" of CPUs.

HP-UX itself appeared to me quite ancient, even 11.23 gave a feeling of moving around in an old somewhat mixed 4.3-BSD'ish/SYS-V environment, compared to other OS'ses (Linux, AIX, Solaris) of the same generation.

I guess that this decision by Oracle will sooner or later also bring other vendors on the plan to pull back their investment on HP-UX/IA64 because the marketshare will get less and less when customers have to make decisions about future technologies. Usually customers tend to have homogeneous environments across all systems and if a main vendor doesn't offer its products any more new investments will be going into a different direction.

Given the fact that Linux became mature over the years and that the advantages of using whatever RISC based platforms are getting smaller and smaller, I would assume that sooner or later customers will switch to Linux. There will be however still some niches with very special requirements still using AIX or Solaris but there's not THAT much functionality advantages those platforms have that Linux can't offer - or won't be in the future.

Just my u20AC 0.02

Markus