14 DAY TRIAL // The whole battle that HP is locked in against Oracle is something of a sore spot for both companies, and the former's CEO, Meg Whitman, had some things to say on the matter.
Meg Whitman recently agreed to an interview with CRN, where she talked about both past and future HP activities.
Among the questions that the CEO was asked to answer was one pertaining to the legal quarrel between HP and Oracle.
Meg Whitman expressed a sort of nostalgia over HP having lost the closeness that used to be a great software-hardware partnership.
“Historically, the HP-Oracle relationship was one of the great software-hardware partnerships in the industry,” she said.
“We used to be on stage with them at Oracle World demonstrating their software on our hardware, and vice versa. Obviously the relationship is strained at the moment.”
Whitman is said to have a reputation for striking consensus, hence the question of whether or not she has any special idea to solve the dispute.
The answer was that she hopes a full-blown trial can be avoided but that, for now, the fight must go on, despite how much she would like to put the matter behind.
“Listen, I would love to get this behind us. That's one of the benefits of being the new CEO -- I wasn't party to all of this, and so I would love to get this behind us. But obviously we've got to protect the legal rights of this company. They obviously feel the same,” she said.
“So we're in a series of legal tussles with them around the world. I hope these can be resolved without going all the way to trial, but we'll see.”
For those that haven't been keeping up with the fight, HP and Oracle are at odds because the latter really wants to stop supporting Intel Itanium chips, which many HP servers use.
Oracle actually suffered a setback recently, though it didn't quite act like it.