HP-UX on Itanium Gets a Boost from IBM, TIBCO

Published: May 25, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Being the dominant vendor of Windows and Linux systems in the world, Hewlett-Packard sometimes forgets to remind the world that it has a very large--and quite profitable--Unix server franchise based on its own HP-UX Unix variant. Having come out of its quiet period last week and shown very good growth for its Integrity server line, but declining HP-UX server sales, HP is keen to let everyone know that it is strongly committed to HP-UX.

In early March, HP and database maker Oracle announced that HP-UX on Itanium was a strategic platform, and said that the future Oracle 12i application suite would be supported on HP-UX 11i v2, which is the Itanium version of HP-UX that was backcast onto HP's own PA-RISC processors (used in the HP 9000 and original Superdome servers that predate the Integrities). HP-UX 11i v2 had many features that were supposed to end up in HP-UX 11i v3. But that 11i v3 release, which was originally due at the end of 2005, has been pushed out and had key features, such as TruCluster clustering software, gutted from it. In any event, what was a surprise to many people is that Oracle's 11i application suite was not already supported on HP-UX when it ran on the Integrities, which no doubt has crimped Integrity sales. The fact that Oracle and HP are now working to get the Oracle 12i applications ported to HP-UX 11i v3 means that HP can expect to see some traction among current and future Oracle customers. As part of the announcement, HP-UX on Itanium was named a strategic platform, giving it the same rank as Solaris on Sparc or Opteron and AIX on Power. This is a shot in the arm for HP.

So is this week's announcement by IBM's Software Group that HP-UX on Integrity is now a "priority platform" for IBM's middleware and development tool portfolio. With the announcement, IBM will triple the number of its programs that are certified on HP-UX on Itanium, including WebSphere middleware, Rational development tools, Lotus groupware, Tivoli systems management tools, and DB2 database and related tools. "This is a significant investment on IBM's part," explains Don Jenkins, vice president of marketing for HP's Business Critical Systems unit. "Even though we are competitors, we have a mutual interest here." IBM had around 20 of its programs certified on HP-UX on Integrity--including the DB2 database and its WebSphere MQ message queuing middleware--and will now boost that to 60 products. IBM is starting its ports to HP-UX 11i now; no word on when they will all be done.

HP is also quite pleased that it has convinced TIBCO, a provider of enterprise application integration middleware that is very popular among financial services companies that have to glue together applications running on mainframes, Unix boxes, and Wintel and Lintel servers, has replaced Solaris as its preferred Unix platform and named HP-UX to that position. Jenkins says that TIBCO is working on ports over the next twelve months, initially starting with the company's Staffware iProcess Suite and the upcoming "Matrix" SOA platform. TIBCO's BusinessWorks and Rendezvous products and various adapter programs are already supported on HP-UX on Integrity servers.

Jenkins says that the reason people are coming around to HP-UX 11i is simple: money. HP estimates that it has about a half million or so HP-UX licenses out there in the world, making it a very big ecosystem. HP also estimates that it derives about $6 billion to $8 billion in annual sales from the HP-UX line, including servers, storage, services, and software--and maybe as high as $10 billion. This is against the $32 billion in sales that the whole Technology and Services Group gets a year at HP. And, HP is supporting vendors who port to HP-UX on Itanium with its $1 billion annual investment in Itanium development and marketing. "It's a sign of the times," says Jenkins. "We are gaining share. And we are willing to put our money where our mouth is on go-to-market." Of the 8,000 applications that have been ported to the Integrity server line, roughly half are running on HP-UX. Jenkins says that about 75 percent of the software needed to keep the HP-UX ecosystem healthy is there--and the IBM and TIBCO deals only make it that much better.

While HP's Unix server sales were down 8 percent in its latest quarter, Jenkins says that this can be attributed mostly to the delays in brining the dual-core "Montecito" Itanium processors to market. He reminds everyone that HP-UX server sales had been growing in the 3 to 5 percent range for eight quarters before that. While this is not huge growth, it is a lot better than the declining Unix server business as a whole.

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