The XSi Data Center Blog:

It’s nothing new these days, but Oracle has been involved in yet another court battle.  This time, the Redwood City, California based Oracle was in Europe trying to prevent a German company from reselling Oracle software licenses.

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.”

How many times have you heard vendors claim that they are the “Best” at supporting their own equipment? Seems logical ‐ after all they built the box, so would know that box best. True at the design level , but irrelevant for field‐based hardware maintenance. Field repair is a push‐pull business. Hardware today is designed to be easily repaired by the lowest paid technicians possible. Parts are cheap by design. The largest real differentiation is over terms and conditions and not parts or labor.