Oracle joins Itanium rally
By Shelley Solheim, IDG News Service, 03/02/06
Oracle Thursday came out with a show of support for HP servers based on the Itanium processor.
While Itanium-based servers have been slow coming out of the gate, analysts expect to see an uptick in the next few years. Market research firm IDC predicts that spending on Itanium-based servers will grow to about $6.6 billion by 2009 from $2.4 billion in 2005.
Oracle's public show of support comes on the heels of an announcement last month from a group of technology companies including Intel, Bull, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, NEC, Silicon Graphics Inc. and Unisys, which pledged to invest $10 billion in the next five years to develop and promote Itanium-based products.
Oracle Thursday said that HP-UX 11i, HP's flavor of the Unix operating system, combined with Itanium processor technology is a "strategic platform" for the database giant and that it would plan future software releases for it at the same time as for other major Unix platforms, according to a statement. Oracle said it would also offer licensing deals for HP Virtual Server Environment users.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, HP President and CEO Mark Hurd and Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini will outline more details of the initiative during a Webcast on Thursday.
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