Itanium Uncertainties Strike at HP Business Critical Revenues

Intel may still be speaking of the Itanium and that it plans to keep pushing it forward, but the waves caused by Oracle's decision to drop support for it were far reaching enough that HP's revenues swayed.

HP and Oracle ended up taking things to court after the latter said it would no longer support the Intel Itanium server processor platform.

The Santa Clara, California-based chip giant did just speak about the upcoming Poulson, but even the steady flow of info on this invention did not stop HP's mission critical server business outlet from sliding downwards.

This, naturally, did not sit very well with HP, as made obvious by the statements during the quarterly conference call with financial analysts.

"Revenue in business critical systems declined 9% year-over-year. This decline is sharper than expected as our ability to close deals has been impacted by Oracle's Itanium decision and orders are being delayed or canceled,” said Catherine Lesjak, chief financial officer of HP, at the quarterly conference call with financial analysts.

“We are working diligently to enforce the commitments that Oracle has made to our customers and to HP."

HP's business critical systems revenue fell 9% on year and 13.2% compared to the first quarter (of Fiscal year 2011), although one should keep in mind that HP did perform some changes to accounting methods, among other things.

Overall, even though HP still sees great things ahead for its BCS business, the Oracle-caused Itanium woes are proving to be a hindrance.

"In business critical systems, we firmly believe that HP Itanium-based server platform is by far the best in the industry, and we are fully committed to its future. In fact, it is the strength of this platform that is likely behind all those approach to drive customers away from HP technology,” said CEO Leo Apotheker.