The XSi Data Center Blog:

Private industry has had decades of experience surviving downturns and bankruptcies while still maintaining a healthy IT environment. Government agencies, particularly DOD, and DHS are unaccustomed to real cost cutting, and may need some help learning how to get by with less, perhaps a LOT less.

After more than a week of deliberations, the jury in Oracle v. Google finally came back with a verdict over patent infringement on Wednesday.  Oracle claimed Googles Android tramples on its intellectual property rights to the Java programming language, but the jury disagreed and ruled that Google has not infringed Oracle Corps patents, putting an indefinite hold on Oracles quest for damages in a fight between the two Silicon Valley giants over smartphone technology.  But this is all a distraction from the real disaster at the heart of the company.

In what seems to be a battle to the end, Oracle and HP are going to trial in the Itanium lawsuit at the end of this month.  Both sides attempted to convince Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge, James Kleinberg, to hand them a win before trial. But Kleinberg denied those motions in a tentative ruling on Tuesday, May 1st.  He urged both sides to “give serious consideration to settlement,” and called the case, “extremely challenging,” adding that he did not know how it would turn out.  Oracle lawyer Dan Wall said at a court hearing that a settlement “isn’t going to happen.”

Upon reviewing Hewlett-Packard’s financials, it’s easy to see why the company turned around and sued Oracle last year after the database vendor decided to pull support for HP’s Itanium systems.

Oracles shares fell as much as 13% as Oracle reported it missed its 2Q earnings and losing $20 Billion of Market Cap and Sun sales were off by 10%.

It’s always interesting to track worldwide server shipments and revenue. According to Gartner, shipments grew 7.2% year-over-year and revenue from server shipments grew 5.2%.

Thailand’s worst flooding in at least five decades has claimed 564 lives since July. While most of Bangkok’s central business district remains dry, manufacturers who supply parts to Seagate and other Thai computer disk drive and parts manufacturers are having difficulty and the flooding is causing shipping delays.