HP Supports Customers Despite Oracle’s Anti-customer Actions

Amid plummeting SPARC server market share, Oracle seeks to force customers to buy their servers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--()--HP (NYSE:HPQ) today reiterated that it will continue the development and innovation of Itanium®-based Integrity server platforms with its HP-UX operating system using a roadmap that extends more than 10 years.

In addition, HP will continue to support customers running existing versions of Oracle software on Itanium-based Integrity servers, both existing and future platforms, during the same timeframe. Last year, HP launched the industry’s most modern mission-critical architecture in more than a decade. This constitutes the longest published roadmap of any UNIX vendor in the industry.

“Oracle continues to show a pattern of anti-customer behavior as they move to shore up their failing Sun server business,” said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP. “HP believes in fair and honest competition. Competition is good for customers, innovation and the marketplace. We are shocked that Oracle would put enterprises and governments at risk while costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity in a shameless gambit to limit fair competition.”

In a direct contradiction to a statement made yesterday by Oracle, Paul Otellini, president and chief executive officer, Intel Corporation said, “Intel’s work on Intel Itanium processors and platforms continues unabated with multiple generations of chips currently in development and on schedule. We remain firmly committed to delivering a competitive, multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture.”

Poulson is Intel’s next-generation 32-nm, 8-core-based Itanium chip, and is on track to more than double the performance of the existing Tukwila architecture. Kittson is an officially committed roadmap product for Itanium beyond Poulson and also is in active development. Intel® Itanium processor industry momentum will be highlighted in a keynote at the upcoming Beijing Intel Developer’s Forum.

HP moved ahead into second position in the UNIX market while Sun lost share and fell back into third since Oracle announced it would acquire Sun in April of 2009.(1) It is clear that Oracle customers are voting with their purchasing decisions against the Sun platform. This latest Oracle action of disinformation is clearly an attempt to force customers into purchasing Sun servers in a desperate move to slow their declining market share.

HP remains committed to supporting its customers and their applications through the next decade and beyond. Customers who wish to preserve a fair and competitive marketplace can email Oracle at gcp-customerfeedback_us@oracle.com.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure at the convergence of the cloud and connectivity, creating seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.

(1) Internal analysis based on published market data.

Intel and Itanium are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

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Contacts

HP
Terri Molini, +1-415-480-4355
terri.molini@hp.com
HP Media Hotline, +1-866-266-7272
www.hp.com/go/newsroom
or
Burson-Marsteller for HP
Ezra Rich, +1-212-614-4325
ezra.rich@bm.com

Contacts

HP
Terri Molini, +1-415-480-4355
terri.molini@hp.com
HP Media Hotline, +1-866-266-7272
www.hp.com/go/newsroom
or
Burson-Marsteller for HP
Ezra Rich, +1-212-614-4325
ezra.rich@bm.com