Oracle calls HP suit over Itanium a 'publicity stunt'

IDG News Service - Hewlett-Packard's lawsuit against Oracle over its decision to stop developing software for Intel's Itanium processors is a "publicity stunt" and meant to "lay the blame on Oracle for the disruption that will occur when HP's Itanium-based server business inevitably comes to an end," Oracle said in a court filing Wednesday.

"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 ... that has no future," the filing in a California superior court states. "Intel has wanted to discontinue Itanium production for years, and HP knows it."

HP is "perpetuating a myth" that Itanium has a 10-year road map and instead is "suing Oracle for the temerity to tell customers the truth," it adds.

Oracle's filing asks the court to reject an HP motion to seal records in the case, saying the litigation should "take place in the sunshine."

HP has claimed that Oracle's decision to stop supporting Itanium was in violation of commitments between the companies, and part of a plan to force HP customers onto Oracle's own hardware systems.

No such agreement exists, according to Oracle.

"The core allegation in this case -- which HP has aggressively sold to the press -- is that HP has a contract with Oracle guaranteeing that Oracle will develop new versions of its flagship database product (and apparently everything else Oracle makes) to run on HP's Itanium systems," Oracle said in its filing. "Such an important contract, if it existed, would obviously be a heavily negotiated, fully documented formal contract, with terms and conditions and payment obligations and all the other characteristics of real-world commercial agreements. But there is no such agreement for porting the Oracle database to Itanium."

In Oracle's view, the agreement amounted to a "corporate hug" between Oracle and HP following the resolution of a lawsuit HP filed against its former CEO, Mark Hurd, after he took a job as co-president of Oracle, according to the filing.

In a press release at the time, Oracle and HP said they had "reaffirmed their long-term strategic partnership" and "commitment to delivering the best products and solutions to their more than 140,000 shared customers," Oracle's filing adds. "HP cannot seriously contend that this general reaffirmation of a non-contractual 'partnership' guaranteed HP apparently perpetual new versions of Oracle software -- and pricing guarantees to boot."

During the Hurd dispute, HP asked Oracle to commit to support "all ongoing versions" of its HP-UX operating system, which runs on Itanium-based servers, with its "relevant database, middleware and application products," it adds. "Oracle unequivocally rejected the request because ... it was so out of line in that context."