Over two years ago, I blogged on how the Oracle/Sun merger would change the computing landscape. While others were saying that Oracle only wanted Java, mySQL, and Sun’s customer list, I said, “Oracle will be working on very tight integration between the two companies and will begin to sell a juiced up Oracle Database Engine against Oracle running on any other platform.”
Not only did that come to pass, but Oracle is doing everything that it can to kill Oracle on HP Integrity servers, forcing enterprise customers to abandon HP and give all of their database infrastructure dollars to Larry & Co. Recently, HP accused Oracle of sabotaging its enterprise business by saying that HP’s Itanium servers has no future. It accuses Oracle of doubling the price of its software for Itanium servers, refusing to fix bugs, and generally making the life of 140,000 HP Oracle users miserable and uncertain. Well, color me surprised (not).
Going back to that original blog post, I said that HP had an incredible response to the Sun acquisition, namely the massively parallel HP Integrity NonStop Server running SQL/MX. But rather than investing in the NonStop server to take on and beat Oracle on Sun, HP continued winding it down, thus setting themselves up for the showdown now taking place.
My last sentence in that original post was. “I seriously would be considering how to use the HP NonStop server to protect HP from the Oracle-Sun onslaught against Oracle on HP-UX. And don’t think that it won’t be coming, because Larry doesn’t like to lose.”
I hate to say that I told you so, but NonStop was HP’s only answer. I hope it’s not too late to turn the ship around.
