Ever since former HP CEO Mark Hurd joined Oracle last year, a growing discord has emerged between two of the biggest IT companies in the world.

Oracle and HP have been feuding publicly for several months now. It started when HP objected to Hurd joining Oracle as co-president last September and filed a lawsuit to prevent the software giant from hiring him. The lawsuit was eventually settled, but not before a nasty and very public exchange between HP and Oracle.

The grudge match continued when HP hired former SAP chief executive Leo Apotheker as its CEO, a move that was heavily criticized by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison , among others. Oracle was suing rival SAP for software theft at the time, and Ellison threatened to subpoena Apotheker for the lawsuit, while HP cried foul and claimed Oracle's tactic was intended to harass its new CEO.

The mayhem didn't stop there, either. Last month Oracle dropped support for Intel's Itanium platform for HP-UX servers, further ruffling HP's feathers. In return, HP criticized Ellison and Co. for the move and asked HP partners to encourage Oracle to reverse its Itanium decision. The Itanium flap has led to questions from partners and customers about how the two vendors will co-exist – if at all – in the high-end enterprise market.

And most recently, the HP-Oracle feud was brought back into the courtroom when HP filed a suit against Adrian Jones, a former HP channel executive who left the company in February to join Oracle. HP accused Jones of downloading and copying confidential information and trade secrets from HP before joining Oracle.

CRN's Steve Burke and Rob Wright discuss the bloody feud between HP and Oracle and examine how the dissolution of a once-strong alliance is affecting solution providers and customers in the trenches.

Right-click to download this podcast