Opposition HP and Oracle. Continuation
After reading the “HP and Oracle customers react: not happy, but coping,” blog post on Forrester Research on zdnet, I decided to translate it and add a few comments to my previous post, “How will HP and Oracle's confrontation affect Open Source?” . Translation under the cut, but for now a few comments on the last post:
Despite the fact that someone was struck by the "analytics" of the document, in fact, there it was predicted that Oracle would abandon Itanium. What, in my opinion, testifies to the professionalism of the employees who wrote "A brief analysis ..". Perhaps, thanks to that document, the company saved huge money.
Regarding comments like: “And what’s the reason for OpenSource, I didn’t understand ...”. I want to draw your attention to the fact that the Forrester post states that most customers consider the possibility of switching to Linux (as is the case with the “Brief Analysis ..”), as the most likely way out of this situation. And on zdnet, a post about HP and Oracle client responses is in the Open Source section .
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In the comments on the previous post, IBM IBM’s DB2 was mentioned for good reason (details are rolled up) - currently, only IBM and EnterpriseDB have mechanisms for moving from Oracle. By the way, after the announcement of the failure of Oracle from Itanium, EnterpriseDB decided to provide support for HP-UX .
Further retelling of Richard Fichera's post:
After hitting Oracle on HP and Itanium, I sent out numerous e-mails to various companies and received about a dozen messages from HP and Oracle customers who wanted to discuss options for further action. I did not notice some mass panic in the answers, and summed up several scenarios for the development of events into several conclusions:
Most HP and Oracle customers have not yet switched to the latest version of the DBMS, so they have time to take any measures. This time is limited by the need to upgrade their applications and DBMS to a version larger than the current Oracle DB 11.2 for Itanium. It turns out that for those customers who are still on the 9th version of Oracle, the time for making decisions can reach several years. But those who are already at 11.2 will be forced to migrate to something along with the next update cycle. The most common application that was mentioned in the messages is SAP, followed by programs from Oracle itself.
Customers with Oracle software, such as Hyperion, PeopleSoft, eBusiness Suite or third-party vendors, are likely to face serious restrictions on updating these products. In some cases, independent developers will encourage users to change, which they do not really want. Several clients have informed me that they will postpone updates in order to avoid the need to use unsupported versions of the DBMS.
What are the companies described above going to undertake with respect to their server platform? Most customers do not plan to change anything, at least in the short term. They want to consider all possible options and deliberately choose an alternative. I would say that only two clients have a “panic mode”, and in both cases this is related to the previously existing plan for a large-scale upgrade of HP servers and Oracle software. Frankly, these two companies need to find an alternative in the next 6-12 months.
However, the absence of panic does not mean the absence of anxiety. All current HP customers are considering options that boil down to one of three (or can be done simultaneously):
- Let it be as it is. The main part of the clients I spoke with are going to wait a while to see how realistic the appearance (over the course of several years) of Superdome-class systems on x86 and HP-UX is. My personal opinion on this is as follows: HP has the technology to do this, but there is no guarantee that Oracle will support HP-UX on x86. I would advise not to count on it.
- Go to Linux. Clients who had plans to migrate to Linux informed me that they would be more actively implementing these plans. Considering the Intel Xeon E7 line and the further development of Linux, most customers will consider this option. There is, however, doubts about Oracle’s readiness for long-term support for RHEL or SUSE. Several customers have reported that, according to rumors, Oracle in the future will only support its own Linux distribution. It goes without saying that we will turn to Oracle for clarification.
- Go to another UNIX provider. Two companies reported that their only reasonable option is to switch to another UNIX system that will support future versions of Oracle DBMS, as well as applications from its stack. For most modern enterprises, this means choosing either IBM or Oracle / Sun. Ironically, one of these two companies has just completed a long-term transition process from SPARC / Solaris to Itanium / HP-UX.
Customers are extremely concerned about this situation. Everyone with whom I spoke feels that I received a “knife in the back” from Oracle and the general idea that runs through the thread of all discussions - “How can I trust Oracle if they treat their clients like that?” The reality is that most clients actually have no choice - they should either stay with HP-UX, freeze existing solutions as far as possible, or switch to x86 and Linux. In addition, the failure of Oracle from Itanium reinforced the desire of some customers to switch to Windows / SQL. And there was a whole group of users who would appreciate any attempts by HP and SAP to provide them with an “Oracle-less” solution.
Of competing UNIX vendors, only IBM can turn this situation to its advantage. Oracle software does not work badly on IBM POWER servers, and IBM has a viable proposal for migrating from Oracle to DB2. There is a risk that Oracle will try to replicate the focus that they have done with Itanium, and with IBM POWER (after all, any logic regarding sales volumes applied for Itanium versus x86 fits POWER), but I think this will not happen soon. For various reasons, for example, fearing the wrath of customers, panic, or retaliation by IBM, which with the offer of its own DB2 database is not as defenseless as HP.
Despite the fact that someone was struck by the "analytics" of the document, in fact, there it was predicted that Oracle would abandon Itanium. What, in my opinion, testifies to the professionalism of the employees who wrote "A brief analysis ..". Perhaps, thanks to that document, the company saved huge money.
Regarding comments like: “And what’s the reason for OpenSource, I didn’t understand ...”. I want to draw your attention to the fact that the Forrester post states that most customers consider the possibility of switching to Linux (as is the case with the “Brief Analysis ..”), as the most likely way out of this situation. And on zdnet, a post about HP and Oracle client responses is in the Open Source section .
')
In the comments on the previous post, IBM IBM’s DB2 was mentioned for good reason (details are rolled up) - currently, only IBM and EnterpriseDB have mechanisms for moving from Oracle. By the way, after the announcement of the failure of Oracle from Itanium, EnterpriseDB decided to provide support for HP-UX .
Further retelling of Richard Fichera's post:
HP and Oracle customers are not thrilled.
After hitting Oracle on HP and Itanium, I sent out numerous e-mails to various companies and received about a dozen messages from HP and Oracle customers who wanted to discuss options for further action. I did not notice some mass panic in the answers, and summed up several scenarios for the development of events into several conclusions:
Most HP and Oracle customers have not yet switched to the latest version of the DBMS, so they have time to take any measures. This time is limited by the need to upgrade their applications and DBMS to a version larger than the current Oracle DB 11.2 for Itanium. It turns out that for those customers who are still on the 9th version of Oracle, the time for making decisions can reach several years. But those who are already at 11.2 will be forced to migrate to something along with the next update cycle. The most common application that was mentioned in the messages is SAP, followed by programs from Oracle itself.
Customers with Oracle software, such as Hyperion, PeopleSoft, eBusiness Suite or third-party vendors, are likely to face serious restrictions on updating these products. In some cases, independent developers will encourage users to change, which they do not really want. Several clients have informed me that they will postpone updates in order to avoid the need to use unsupported versions of the DBMS.
What are the companies described above going to undertake with respect to their server platform? Most customers do not plan to change anything, at least in the short term. They want to consider all possible options and deliberately choose an alternative. I would say that only two clients have a “panic mode”, and in both cases this is related to the previously existing plan for a large-scale upgrade of HP servers and Oracle software. Frankly, these two companies need to find an alternative in the next 6-12 months.
However, the absence of panic does not mean the absence of anxiety. All current HP customers are considering options that boil down to one of three (or can be done simultaneously):
- Let it be as it is. The main part of the clients I spoke with are going to wait a while to see how realistic the appearance (over the course of several years) of Superdome-class systems on x86 and HP-UX is. My personal opinion on this is as follows: HP has the technology to do this, but there is no guarantee that Oracle will support HP-UX on x86. I would advise not to count on it.
- Go to Linux. Clients who had plans to migrate to Linux informed me that they would be more actively implementing these plans. Considering the Intel Xeon E7 line and the further development of Linux, most customers will consider this option. There is, however, doubts about Oracle’s readiness for long-term support for RHEL or SUSE. Several customers have reported that, according to rumors, Oracle in the future will only support its own Linux distribution. It goes without saying that we will turn to Oracle for clarification.
- Go to another UNIX provider. Two companies reported that their only reasonable option is to switch to another UNIX system that will support future versions of Oracle DBMS, as well as applications from its stack. For most modern enterprises, this means choosing either IBM or Oracle / Sun. Ironically, one of these two companies has just completed a long-term transition process from SPARC / Solaris to Itanium / HP-UX.
Customers are extremely concerned about this situation. Everyone with whom I spoke feels that I received a “knife in the back” from Oracle and the general idea that runs through the thread of all discussions - “How can I trust Oracle if they treat their clients like that?” The reality is that most clients actually have no choice - they should either stay with HP-UX, freeze existing solutions as far as possible, or switch to x86 and Linux. In addition, the failure of Oracle from Itanium reinforced the desire of some customers to switch to Windows / SQL. And there was a whole group of users who would appreciate any attempts by HP and SAP to provide them with an “Oracle-less” solution.
Of competing UNIX vendors, only IBM can turn this situation to its advantage. Oracle software does not work badly on IBM POWER servers, and IBM has a viable proposal for migrating from Oracle to DB2. There is a risk that Oracle will try to replicate the focus that they have done with Itanium, and with IBM POWER (after all, any logic regarding sales volumes applied for Itanium versus x86 fits POWER), but I think this will not happen soon. For various reasons, for example, fearing the wrath of customers, panic, or retaliation by IBM, which with the offer of its own DB2 database is not as defenseless as HP.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/118239/
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