Re: desupport - end of an era

From: David Roberts <big.dave.roberts_at_googlemail.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:15:44 +0100
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=_nSL7CsnNyYeePgH-VGBruO9DvA_at_mail.gmail.com>

I accept that the cynical position, that Oracle is taking an opportunity to hurt a competitor as partially valid.

However I would suggest that the counter position is that Oracle's product line and business model has significantly changed.

There was a time where Oracle had a single product and porting this product to as many platforms as possible had incremental and cumulative benefits.

i.e. Adding a supplier to Oracles potential installed base would benefit Oracle by the absolute market share of the plat form and would increase competition increasing customers confidence in Oracle as a low cost standard platform.

At the year before lasts, UKOUG conference and many other conferences, I'm sure they keynote speaker from oracle made the point that Oracle had purchased 36 companies in the previous 36 months.

They then clarified that purchases could only make sense for them if the products being purchased conformed to industry standards and could already inter operate with their current infrastructure.

They stated that they had no intention of, and probably couldn't afford to implement a new novel standard of their own, because they would then have such a massive pool of software that the standard would have to be applied to that it would be economically unviable to implement.

The question is how much of this bought in technology has been pre-migrated to the IA64 platform?

I'm currently working with forms again, as I understand it Oracle hasn't certified SSO with forms 11g yet. (SSO, depending on how you define it has grown to a suite of 12 products of differing heritages.) 10g application server falls out of support at the end of 2011. Oracle is verbally committing to certify SSO with Oracle forms before the end of the year, but they aren't committing to which release it will be certified with.

So we may get the current version of Oracle forms certified (11.1.1.4) or the next version of 11g (11.1.1.5) or the first version of 12g, both of which are expected before the end of the year.

In short with the breadth and volatility of Oracles software offering, I can't see how they can afford to support minority platforms.

OTOH, if Oracle is such a significant source of revenue for HP, I'd be gob-smacked if Oracle hadn't turned round to HP before this announcement and said: 'OK, your platform isn't profitable for us any-more, unless you want to subsidise our development from your profits from the sales of our products on your platform.....'

So, consolidation is inevitable, and Itanium was the weaker offspring of Intel!

It's all driven by maths and accountants, go figure!

They already have!

D

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 9:02 PM, D'Hooge Freek <Freek.DHooge_at_uptime.be>wrote:

> Very true,
>
> But still, I was surprised by Oracle's move.
> I understand that windows and Redhat no longer support Itanium, they never
> had any real user base. But I always thought that Oracle on HP-UX had a
> reasonable market share.
>
> Regards,
>
> Freek D'Hooge
> Uptime
> Oracle Database Administrator
> email: freek.dhooge_at_uptime.be
> tel +32(0)3 451 23 82
> http://www.uptime.be
> disclaimer: www.uptime.be/disclaimer
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]
> On Behalf Of Goulet, Richard
> Sent: donderdag 14 april 2011 20:32
> To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> Subject: RE: desupport - end of an era
>
> Well, In Oracle's defense:
>
>
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/185196/red_hat_to_drop_itanium_support_in_enterprise_linux_6.html
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/18/redhat_rhel6_itanium_dead/
>
> http://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/224201371/microsoft-follows-red-hat-in-ending-itanium-development.htm;jsessionid=o-DbnYkJ5gxFNd4gxiAtHw**.ecappj01
>
> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174798/Microsoft_ending_support_for_Itanium
>
>
> Dick Goulet
> Senior Oracle DBA/NA Team Leader
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: D'Hooge Freek [mailto:Freek.DHooge_at_uptime.be]
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 1:59 PM
> To: Nadeem M. Khan
> Cc: barb.baker_at_gmail.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> Subject: RE: desupport - end of an era
>
> Yep, Oracle has stopped developing for Itanium.
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> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/346696
>
>
> Freek D'Hooge
> Uptime
> Oracle Database Administrator
> email: freek.dhooge_at_uptime.be
> tel +32(0)3 451 23 82
> http://www.uptime.be
> disclaimer: www.uptime.be/disclaimer
> ---
> From: nadiem_at_gmail.com [mailto:nadiem_at_gmail.com] On Behalf Of Nadeem M.
> Khan
> Sent: donderdag 14 april 2011 19:41
> To: D'Hooge Freek
> Cc: barb.baker_at_gmail.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> Subject: Re: desupport - end of an era
>
> Does this also mean Oracle won't have any releases for HP-UX ?
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 8:22 PM, D'Hooge Freek <Freek.DHooge_at_uptime.be>
> wrote:
> "The terminal releases for OpenVMS on Itanium will be Oracle Database
> 10.2.0.5"
> 10.2.0.5, no 11.1 or 11.2
>
> OpenVMS was already long abandoned by Oracle
> They just made if official now
>
>
> Freek D'Hooge
> Uptime
> Oracle Database Administrator
> email: freek.dhooge_at_uptime.be
> tel +32(0)3 451 23 82
> http://www.uptime.be
> disclaimer: www.uptime.be/disclaimer
> ---
> From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]
> On Behalf Of Barbara Baker
> Sent: donderdag 14 april 2011 18:14
> To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> Subject: desupport - end of an era
>
> This made me sad.
>
> Dear Oracle Rdb and Oracle Database on OpenVMS Customers,
>
> On Tuesday, March 22nd , Oracle announced that we are discontinuing
> all new software
> development on the Intel Itanium microprocessor.
> The terminal releases for OpenVMS on Itanium will be Oracle Database
> 10.2.0.5 and Oracle Rdb product family 7.3.
>
> Obviously I knew it was coming, but seeing it in print still made me sad.
> sigh.
>
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Received on Thu Apr 14 2011 - 17:15:44 CDT