[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[JF Mezei]

John Wallace wrote:

> largely outweighed by other disadvantages. Obviously Intel have got
> much deeper pockets than DEC had back then, and therefore if they wish
> they could keep IA64 alive, 

Intel already signaled to HP that it wanted to kill IA64. It is HP which
is funding Intel to continue the work. So IA64 is essentially an HP chip
with HP having outsourced its development to Intel. And HP didn't want
us to know about this deal since it confirms that IA64 isn't a viable
business to Intel.

Also, Intel and HP have shareholders. Intel has clean hands because they
likely profit from performing that IA64 development contract paid for by HP.

HP on the other hand may start to get serious questions from
shareholders on why they are wasting so much money on IA64, especially
when BCS sales are tanking and HP already told shareholders there was
nothing they could do to stop it and that they hope to rebuild BCS based
on Project Odyssey.


> AMD64-dependent? Do Intel as a company benefit overall by keeping IA64
> alive? 

Intel is not the one keeping IA64 alive. HP is. Intel is merely
executing a contract paid for by HP to continue to develop (at slow
pace) that IA64 thing.



> Do HP as a company benefit overall, and in particular do they
> benefit more than they would if the software from their "business
> critical" stovepipe wasn't IA64-only?

Meg Whitman has already anounced that the tradictional BCS (aka: IA64
based) has no future and that BCS will be rebuilt based on 8086 servers
(project Odyssey).


> Or are the people who benefit most actually just a few executives who
> have made bad decisions in the past and don't want to admit in public
> that mistakes happen and predictions aren't always right?

HP has a history of bad governance (at least during the era where they
are responsible for VMS).  LaCarly was probably too dumb and just
executed stuff about IA64 that had been decided before.

Under Hurd, there was an attempt to port the BCS OS to 8086 because they
knew IA64 was to be EOLed by Intel, but this was cancelled, after which
the OS engineering teams were disbanded and maintenance sent to india.
>From the point where HP decided that HP-UX, VMS etc wouldn't go beyond
IA64, their only option was the extend the lifetime for IA64. Intel was
to pull the plug so HP started to shift money to Intel to keep the thing
alive to give HP more time to think.

The only problem is that HP doesn't have the guts to say it out loud
because it fears it will accelerate loss of BCS business. Duh !

The thing is that customers are even more pissed off an HP NOT telling
them and more likely to choose another vendor because HP has failed to
make public porting plans, porting help, porting deals etc. (equivalent
to Alpha RetainTrust).