The Oracle motion makes interesting reading
... particularly the section where Oracle talk about their decision to discontinue development on Itanium - this is on p11 of the motion. To paraphrase what is said:
Oracle were talking to Intel about development and the context is clearly stated as being about "exadata" (oracle's Xeon based appliance). Ellison asked if focussing on Xeon was "the right thing to do". Intel said it was, and Ellison concluded that Itanium was a dead duck.
But if the context of this conversation was Oracle and Exadata, then why would Intel say anything else? If the context of the conversation had been Oracle's entire software suite then who knows what Intel's repsonse might have been? If this was the entire basis for the decision to dump Itanium it seems a little woolly to me. Surey Oracle should have gone back to Intel and said - OK, based on our conversations we are going to drop support for Itanium completely... anyone who wasn't looking to gain a competitive edge out of this move would have done that, but Larry sniffed an opportunity and didn't think through the consequences of his actions, and now here we are...
How long until we are having similar conversations about ongoing Oracle support for RHEL? They _still_ haven't announced RHEL6 certifications for their products...
The court case is a side show - the real big deal here is TRUST ORACLE AT YOUR PERIL