March 28, 2011, 4:47 PM — Oracle customers this week expressed concern about the effort and cost of upgrading IT infrastructures after the software maker said it would stop development for Intel's Itanium chip architecture.
In a terse statement issued on Wednesday, Oracle said it would discontinue software development for Itanium, reasoning that Intel's strategic focus was on the x86 architecture, and that Itanium was nearing the end of its life.
The decision has forced Oracle customers using Itanium servers to rethink long-term IT upgrade plans, as Oracle's decision limits future hardware and software options.
Some customers are considering buying new hardware or porting code around a new chip architecture, which could cost millions of dollars. However, Oracle's continuing support of existing software on Itanium servers could protect investments and mitigate short-term issues.
Intel's Itanium chips are primarily available on Hewlett-Packard's Integrity servers, which are designed to be mission-critical systems, built for high uptime. In reaction to Oracle's decision, Intel this week reiterated its commitment to Itanium, while HP said that Oracle's "anti-customer actions" were designed to force customers into buying Sun servers.
Oracle has provided an end-of-life list for software on Itanium servers. The last version of the Oracle database to support Itanium will be 11gR2. The upcoming version 12g will not work on Itanium.
A distribution company runs the Oracle database on Integrity servers with HP's proprietary HP-UX OS. But after Oracle's decision, the future of deploying more Integrity servers is "looking bleak," said Mel Burslan, a senior systems engineer.
The company is slowly moving away from HP-UX to Linux, but if it also decided to move away from Integrity servers, it could cost millions, Burslan said. The company's hardware infrastructure also includes servers based on HP's now-defunct PA-RISC chips, primarily to run legacy applications.
"Knowing the budget of my department ... it would be in (the) several millions of dollars level just for the hardware costs and then a hefty sum for the consulting and additional manpower requirements," Burslan said.
For Veolia Environment Service, North America, Oracle's announcement could end up accelerating migration efforts. The company was already evaluating options to move from Itanium to a new chip architecture, said Todd Sheetz, manager of database administration and enterprise architecture. Veolia runs Oracle's PeopleSoft ERP system on Integrity servers with HP-UX, and database software on x86 servers running Linux.
"The only real option is to migrate to a different chip technology and therefore operating system. Since we are running Linux for the database, that will more than likely be the direction for the application stack as well," Sheetz said.
The company is leaning toward moving the PeopleSoft software stack to Linux on x86 systems. Cost is one reason.
"Support and maintenance for Itanium servers and HP-UX are much higher than X86 and Linux-based systems," Sheetz said.
The current version of PeopleSoft, version 9.1, works on Itanium. The next version, 9.2, expected to arrive next year, will not work on Itanium servers.
Oracle's plans to continue supporting applications on Itanium could allay fears of switching hardware overnight. Sheetz, however, had concerns about Oracle's commitment to issuing patches and bug fixes.
Veolia wants to break away from proprietary Unix systems to industry-standard systems, which are becoming cheaper and faster. An eventual switch to x86 could help Veolia save money in the long run, said Sheetz, who is also on the board of directors for the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG).
"Companies that have not already accepted Linux as an enterprise operating system may have a more difficult time with this announcement. Shops that are Unix only and have historically been using HP-UX will be forced to switch to Linux or Solaris," Sheetz said.
Analysts said that moving to x86 could entail buying new servers and rewriting and recompiling code, which could cost money, but provide long-term savings and an IT upgrade path.
There will be little incentive for companies to pay HP a hefty licensing fee for HP-UX when cheaper OS options like Linux are available, users said. Servers with x86 chips are also cheaper than Itanium, which could reduce IT maintenance and support costs.
