HP and Oracle are fighting in court again over a dispute about the processor chip inside one of HP's servers. The BBC reports that HP has filed a lawsuit claiming that Oracle has used "strong-arm tactics" in order to force customers to purchase servers from Oracle's Sun division rather than from HP.
According to the story, Oracle claimed back in March that upcoming versions of Oracle's database software would not be supported on HP's servers. The servers in question use the Itanium processor chip that's actually developed by Intel. However Oracle claimed that the chip is being phased out by Intel and as a result it would not offer up software that would be run by HP's servers that have the chip installed. For its part Intel has denied any such phase out plans but Oracle claims, "Intel's plans to end-of-life Itanium will be revealed in court."
HP has now countered with a lawsuit directed at Oracle, saying that the company's statements were just " ... strong-arm tactics to coerce customers into replacing their HP servers with Sun servers they do not want." It added that it sent a legal notice to Oracle last week but received no response which HP said left it no choice but to file the lawsuit against Oracle this week.
Oracle and HP have not been happy with each other lately. Orcale's current CEO Mark Hurd came to the company from HP in 2010. However HP claimed at the time that such a move would cause Oracle to "exploit the knowledge of HP's strengths and weaknesses."
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