[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[Paul Sture]

On Fri, 03 Aug 2012 21:05:20 -0400, David Froble wrote:

> Keith Parris wrote:
>> 
>> Actually, the Hurd Agreement confirmed that established practices (of
>> porting and release of new versions) would continue. So those
>> historical practices were effectively put into writing by Oracle and HP
>> signing that Agreement.
>> 
>> The court found HP had kept up its end of the bargain after the
>> Agreement, despite Oracle doing sneaky tricks like doubling the core
>> factor for Itanium (thus raising the price of Oracle on Itanium
>> compared with Sun).
> 
> Hey, fuel costs for Larry's jet goes up every year ....

And will no doubt have taken another leap now he's bought his own 
island...
 
> I'd feel that such tactics do not win friends.  Nor do they work in all
> cases.

I am sure that "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on
me" [1] applies here.

 
> I'm sure there might be some systems out there that are purely Oracle
> Servers, doing nothing else, and for such it might be rather easy for a
> customer to switch.  A businessman looks at the bottom line, and doesn't
> much care about the technical issues. For such a system, perhaps Oracle
> will sell some Sun systems.

Even if the underlying database is feature (and bug?) consistent across 
all platforms, porting from one platform to another is still a major 
undertaking.  Switching from HP-UX/other to Solaris or Oracle's flavour 
of Linux is going to require recompilation and testing at the very least.

Even current RHEL customers are likely to find that switching to Oracle's 
Linux (which I understand is based on RHEL) is going to require serious 
work, and let's not forget those customers who require certification.

http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/index.html

> Not a simple world.  Some will learn to dislike Oracle, and some will
> say "that's the lowest price, get it".  And many somewhere in between.

Agreed.  Somewhere in the host of articles I read during the HP-Oracle 
spat it was pointed out that Oracle probably knows exactly what a port 
away from their products will cost each customer.  In many cases all they 
need to do to retain customers is price their own products at something 
less than that amount.

> While it probably won't mean much to very many people, by charging more
> for an Itanium core, Oracle is basically saying "Itanium is better". 
> Whether they actually mean it or not is another issue.
> 
> Having never gotten close to Oracle, I'm curious.  Is it better than the
> competition?  Is there some overriding reason to get and / or stick with
> Oracle?

Many years ago I was told by the guy running the IT systems for a bunch 
of vehicle importers (another outsource provider like yourself :-)), that 
the moment you choose one database rather than any other you are looking 
at a lock-in.  If that database cannot deliver your own data back to you 
in the ways you need your business choices are limited, so you had better 
choose carefully.

FWIW the database his company was using back then was Cincom's TOTAL.  
This was before relational databases became so popular, but I see that 
Cincom is still alive and well, probably because unlike many others they 
resisted the pressure for an IPO and remain a privately held company.

TOTAL gets a mention here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database#Network_model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincom_Systems#1968.E2.80.931969

Customers like to deal with a stable company.

[1] (Roman Proverb - cue "What have the Romans ever done for us?").

-- 
Paul Sture