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That solution provider's assessment of the Unix server market appears to be correct.
Stamford, Conn.-based analyst firm Gartner, in its quarterly server sales report, estimated last month that total shipments of RISC and Itanium Unix servers in the first quarter of 2012 fell 5.7 percent compared to the same quarter of 2011.
The quarter saw a massive shift in market share between the top vendors, with IBM's Unix server shipments rising 9.0 percent while Oracle's fell1.2 percent and HP's fell 36.0 percent. That resulted in a year-to-year drop in Unix server revenue of 25.7 percent for Oracle and 40.2 percent for HP, while IBM's revenue rose 4.3 percent, Gartner estimated.
The drop in the Unix server market and the shift in market share shows that the dispute between HP and Oracle has become so public that customers are not at a comfort level to make investments in the platform, said John Convery, executive vice president of vendor relations and marketing at Denali Advanced Integration, a Redmond, Wash.-based solution provider and long-time HP partner.
The dispute between HP and Oracle is really becoming a battle of the lawyers and a battle of the press, Convery said.
"This case will get settled out-of-court," he said. "Common sense says you settle these things. My non-technical, common-sense opinion is customers will say enough of this B.S."
The lawsuit certainly hasn't stopped Oracle from trying to recruit HP solution providers to sell Oracle servers, Convery said. Oracle is in a big recruitment push led by Tom LaRocca , a 12-year HP veteran who led HP's PartnerONE program and who in January took a position as Oracle's vice president of worldwide product strategy and alliances, as well as Mark Hurd, a former HP president and CEO who now serves as an Oracle co-president.
"As I talk to my HP partner friends, I see Tom out there pushing hard," he said. "As a partner, we just keep selling to the customer and serving the customer. It's all about the customer experience. We provide the solution. The brand is secondary."
HP and Oracle spokespeople declined to comment on the Bloomberg report.
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