Once partners and now rivals, the Hewlett-Packard and Oracle (News - Alert) saga continues. Mid-June, HP filed a lawsuit against Oracle in the California State court, claiming breach of contract and anti-competitive behavior. The lawsuit followed a letter sent by HP a week earlier, asking oracle to reverse its decision to discontinue software development for Intel (News - Alert) Itanium based servers.

However, Oracle denies the charges, saying that the formal agreement with HP does not include a guarantee of continued support for Itanium-based servers. Additionally, the world’s number three software maker claims that Itanium maker Intel has been planning to phase out the processor for some time and that HP is aware of this development. Incidentally, the Itanium processor was jointly developed by HP and Intel.

Zacks Equity Research reported that HP, through a jury trial, is seeking financial damages and an order prohibiting Oracle from pulling its support from Itanium computers.

Meanwhile, responding to HP lawsuit in a 15-page court filing, Oracle executives are calling it a publicity stunt. In this court filing on June 29th, Oracle said “HP untenably has put itself and thousands of customers out on the end of a very long limb because HP, almost alone now, clings to a decades-old microprocessor architecture-Intel's Itanium chip line-that has no future.”

“Intel has wanted to discontinue Itanium production for years, and HP knows it. The performance advantage over Intel's x86-based microprocessors that once justified Itanium is today effectively gone,” said Oracle.

However, should Itanium go away, it would be a significant financial blow to HP, which generates revenues from its Itanium support agreements, said Oracle. HP by far is the largest consumer of Itanium chips.

“So rather than telling its customers the truth about Intel's plans for phasing out the Itanium platform, and helping those customers transition to Intel Xeon systems or other alternatives, HP perpetuates the myth that there is a long 10-year roadmap for Itanium development,” Oracle wrote. “Now HP is suing Oracle for the temerity to tell customers the truth.”

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