I'm no longer involved with HP-UX and Itanium but I've been an HP-UX geek for 10 years, and some of the readers of my previous blog (aptly named Technocrat-UX) were following me specifically for my comments on that market. I'm no analyst, but anyway my advice is free so here are my thoughts on this story which was unraveled today.
I'm not surprised about Larry's decision to stop development of Oracle on Itanium. It was just a matter of time before Oracle would try different stunts and measures - any measure - to try to save their SPARC platform and lock in customers. This one is a desperate measure indeed. I know a lot of SAP system administrators who won't be delighted to learn this. Some have been claiming for a while that Oracle is the new CA, and this couldn't be more true. If I was still an HP-UX admin, I'd be directly targeted by this decision. But I wouldn't say "Fuck HP". I'd say "Fuck Oracle", big time.
How does that look for HP-UX? Without an enterprise RDBMS, not good. Not good at all. But all is not over for Integrity. Rob Enderle picked up the story today and revealed some interesting information that was shown to him under an NDA:
Unfortunately for Oracle, HP just had a massive analyst event and in the server break-out had showcased under NDA the future for Itanium in new products. While I can’t share that future, it is NDA, and for those of us in the session there was no doubt that Itanium is going to continue. More importantly, the changes being made should make it vastly more cost effective than anything Oracle can announce on SPARC. You’ll understand what I mean in a few months, or if you have an HP relationship, ask HP what I’m talking about and you’ll have a big “ah hah” moment. But you won’t be able to share it any more than I can.
I've been thinking about his statement, trying to read between the lines. Here is my own speculation of what may be ahead. Note here that he's talking about the Itanium platform, there is no mention of HP-UX anywhere in his post. What can I make of this?
Here is what I know:
1. Enderle says that the new platform will be "vastly more cost effective than anything Oracle can announce on SPARC".
2. I bet that Microsoft are probably annoyed by Oracle (sorry, no time this evening to find an article to back this up).
3. I've learned from a trusted source (without signing a CDA) that the DL785 will retire and only the DL580 and DL980 series will be left. Which anyone can deduct from HP's web site, there is currently no G7 offering of the DL785.
...and here is what I predict:
1. Microsoft will be looking for an enterprise-level platform to harness MS-SQL, which has become over the years the "other" enterprise RDBMS.
2. All my current architecture projects are based on MS-SQL and I've learned a little about its licensing recently. This is software priced per CAL or per processor/socket (your choice), and each processor costs - well, costs a lot of money. Customers with thousands of users will want to get the most bang out of every processor they use. Does that sound like a return of Windows and MS-SQL to the Integrity platform? Hard to say if MS keeps a similar pricing with Tukwila's four cores, but it is possible. Microsoft could offer this as a vertically integrated solution pitched to customers who are currently relying on Oracle (or IBM's) solutions.
3. To cater to these mid-size Microsoft customers who aren't interested in blades (let alone Superdome 2s) for a reason or another, HP will release something like the rx5800 and rx9800 which will be based on the industry standard components of the big Proliants - namely, the 580 and 980. These are reliable and huge workhorses. By swapping only a few components, they'll save plenty and be able to offer these servers at a small premium over the x86 versions.
4. As for HP-UX? While the outcome isn't clear, I frankly don't expect Oracle to really stop releasing their RDBMS on HP-UX; I'm sure there are plenty of customers left and some bean counter at Oracle will realize the high risk of loosing them forever if a migration to SPARC is shoved down their throats. If they keep their stance, their loss. I haven't cared about Oracle for a while now.
These are my thoughts.
O.
3 comments:
I was an Oracle database admin for a long time. I decided to look into mysql and postgresql. I found postgresql to be a natural fit and moved a lot of the medium, and smaller project to it. It worked very well. I encourage others to evaluate all of their options.
People are going to have to choose to embrace their O/S+hardware or their RDBMS. I for one walked away from both and have no regrets. :)
This is a complicated issue..
Microsoft is unlikely to return to Itanium, there just isn't the volume to warrant it.
The loss of enterprise RDMS from superdome hurts a great deal, but its worse than that.. with no oracle middleware support, there will be no Itanium SOA clients or other tools, significantly hurting enterprise connectivity.
This in conjunction with Gartner surveys basically saying "when Intel can end its contract with HP it will" is driving software developers away from the platform
Doesn't matter how good the future of Itanium is if there is no software to run on it.
I firmly believe in HPs commitment to Itanium and HP-UX, but others have to offer the same commitments, HP cannot stand alone.
I strongly agree with a push to hit oracle back and get them out of the picture. Their actions are not anywhere near in the best interest of customers and Intels Itanium announcement strongly opposes Oracles motivation for removing support. Itanium has had a rough time since it was announced, but it is finally becoming an extremely mature product. HP's blade system is extremely flexible, modular, and powerful. With just a small inventory of parts, HP can ship anywhere from a 2 core to 32 core systems. The memory is now industry standard and the Itanium chipset is the same as high end xeon. Itanium just got cheap. Last time I have heard a product brief from HP, they say it is two socket rack mount, 2-8 socket blade, or superdome 2 in the future.
As far as databases are concerned, well, it can really be painful to move. Companies will look at a solution that will keep them from having them to repeat the process in the next few years. If HP had a DB, they would go there. DB2 seems like a nice robust move, but the threat that IBM will pull an Oracle is scary. The good thing is, Oracle support is not gone and we have some time to well... watch. People should see the light and hit Oracle back in the only place they care about, their profits right now (not over time). They might reconsider. After all, its not 1990. We have great hardware now and other solid database software that can solve our problems that are... not Oracle.
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