HP and Oracle cheer on Itanium

Firms insist that the beleaguered system is key to centralised IT systems

HP, Oracle and Intel have mounted a three-pronged attack to strengthen each other's prospects around Itanium-based servers, insisting the beleaguered platform is key to centralised IT systems.

In a live webcast, HP's chief Mark Hurd was joined by Intel head Paul Otellini and Oracle boss Larry Ellison in countering criticism over product delays and slow take-up of the 64bit architecture.

Hurd said HP alone would spend $1bn a year over the next five years developing its Itanium-based Integrity server line. He also claimed that half of Global 100 companies are currently running mission-critical apps on Itanium.

Otellini reassured customers that Intel's delayed dual-core Itanium chip, Montecito, is on track to launch in the middle of the year and will deliver improved virtualisation capabilities and enhanced energy efficiency.

In another boost for Itanium, Oracle said its 10g database, applications and middleware will run on HP Integrity servers running HP-UX 11i. Up to now, the vendor has promoted Linux on low-cost servers for its 10g line.

The firm said that new releases of HP-UX 11i running on Itanium would be available at the same time as versions for other leading Unix platforms.

But the Itanium cheerleading prompted criticism from one HP rival. Sun boss Scott McNealy sent an open email to HP chief Hurd, suggesting the two companies instead combine their respective versions of Unix.