Nonetheless, IT executives attending HP’s Discover 2011 user conference in Las Vegas earlier this month didn’t find Oracle exhibiting on the show floor. And although the company’s name appeared on the show program, it was for a session titled “Oracle Database Migrations to Microsoft SQL Server With HP Services.”
Microsoft, meanwhile, was a major presence as HP showed off products optimized for Microsoft’s SQL Server database, including the HP Business Data Warehouse Appliance and the HP Database Consolidation Solution for Microsoft SQL, which consolidates transactional databases.
The SQL Server-enabled offerings were developed as part of a $250 million HP-Microsoft product integration effort announced last year.
The Microsoft-oriented conference took place less than a year after Oracle hired former HP CEO Mark Hurd, which prompted HP to file a lawsuit against the database vendor. Hurd joined Oracle shortly after he was ousted from HP — a forced resignation that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison blamed on “cowardly corporate political correctness.”
And in March, Oracle announced that it would stop supporting its products on Intel Itanium-based systems. HP, which sells the majority of Itanium-based servers, this month hinted that it may file a lawsuit unless Oracle reverses the decision.
Citing HP’s clear moves to encourage users of its hardware to migrate from Oracle to Microsoft software, some IT executives at companies running Oracle software on HP systems remain skeptical of official assurances that they have nothing to worry about.
“They are speaking out of both sides of their mouths,” said Allen Allison, chief security officer at NaviSite, a colocation and managed hosting provider with 12 data centers worldwide.
NaviSite runs Oracle software on HP x86 Itanium-based systems. “I think they realize that at the end of the day, as much as [HP] loves being partnered with Microsoft, they do have a significant installed base with Oracle,” Allison said at the conference.
John Belliveau, a senior systems engineer at a financial services firm he asked not be identified, said he hopes to look at the HP-Microsoft data warehouse offering, particularly because of its attractive licensing plan.
But he added that it would be tough for his firm to stop using Oracle software on its HP hardware. “It’s one thing to announce at a conference that you are taking [Oracle] on, but it’s another thing to prove that you really belong in the same ring,” Belliveau said.
Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT, said he hopes that HP’s Oracle customers needn’t worry about abandonment.
“The real question to consider is how far and how deeply this schism between [Oracle and HP] goes,” King said. “As an undying optimist, I hope Oracle and HP work things out, but if that proves impossible, users have numerous other options,” such as replacing their hardware and/or shifting to new software.
“Migrating to an entirely new hardware and software stack is far less onerous today than it ever was in the past,” King said. “HP and Oracle would be wise to keep that in mind.”
Chris Kanaracus and Nancy Gohring of the IDG News Service contributed to this story.
