Oracle Versus HP: Customers Lose; Oracle And x86 Linux Vendors Win

Vendor acquisitions and strategy shifts continue to disrupt the world of enterprise IT. Few, however, have been as disruptive and one-sided in their impact as the recent decision by Oracle to discontinue support for Itanium-based platforms. Despite Oracle's disclaimers, Forrester believes that this move was driven by Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010, which placed it in direct competition with HP for profitable high-end Unix servers. Forrester interviewed customers affected by the move and found considerable disruption. This report explores the impact on nearly 30,000 customers that are running Oracle software on HP's Itanium servers and provides guidance to infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals facing a decision about what to do next.