Oracle is extending its support for Hewlett-Packard's
Itanium-based Unix servers, with plans to deliver a version of its
flagship E-Business Suite enterprise software for the 64-bit
platform PC server architecture.
Oracle joins enterprise software supplier SAP in supporting the
high-end 64-bit Intel architecture. But even with growing numbers
of software providers supporting Itanium, analyst company IDC
expects it to remain a niche architecture within the
datacentre.
Chris Ingle, group consultant at IDC's systems group, said,
"Itanium is a Risc replacement machine." This means it is aimed at
users running high-end Unix systems from the likes of Sun, IBM and
HP, which are based on Risc processor hardware.
Ingle said IT directors who want to remain with HP would
eventually have to migrate to Itanium, as the supplier's strategy
is to migrate users of its PA-Risc and Alpha Risc processors.
Those who plan to stay with IBM or Sun will be offered Power and
Sparc Risc systems respectively, and Xeon and Opteron hybrid
32-bit/64-bit datacentre hardware.
Oracle's core database software is already available to run on
HP's Integrity Itanium servers, but the E-Business Suite, covering
financial and other business applications, has been missing. Oracle
said it would introduce an Itanium-compliant version of the
E-Business Suite by the end of the year.
HP and Intel, which have jointly designed the Itanium chip, have
been working to increase the number of software applications that
can run on the Itanium platform.
A perceived lack of compliant applications is a major reason why
Itanium has not taken off. And Microsoft has said it will not be
releasing an Itanium version of Exchange 12, the next release of
the company's market leading e-mail server.
SAP also supports Itanium, but the last Itanium-based server
featured in the SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark certified
performance tests was in August 2005. At that time Hitachi
submitted an eight-processor Itanium server running 64-bit Windows
2003 Server and 64-bit SQL Server 2003, which was cable of
processing 62,330 line items per hour and supporting 600 users.
The current top performer is an HP Proliant eight-way Xeon
dual-core server running 64-bit Windows 2003 Server and 64-bit SQL
Server 2005, which ran a certified SD benchmark in February 2006
processing 109,000 line items per hour and supported 1,090
users.
Industry backers of Itanium recently pledged to spend ｣5.8bn
over the next five years to promote the Itanium platform, with the
bulk of the money coming from Intel and HP.