Ancient oracles predicted the end of kingdoms and alliances by foretelling the future. The 21st Century Oracle has foretold the end of its relationship with the HP e3000, leaving HP as the sole provider of databases for the platform.

HP Commercial Systems Division (CSY) Worldwide Marketing Manager Christine Martino said Oracle has told HP it will be ending support for the HP 3000 platform, an exit process that begins on December 31 of this year. The $10 billion software provider has also refused to port its Oracle 8 database to the HP 3000, one of what Martino said were several platforms being dropped by Oracle.

Support that includes bug fixes for the current 7.3.4 version of the database ends this year. Martino said support would be available to 3000 sites using Oracle through December of 2002, service that Oracle said includes call-in and Web-based MetaLink support. Oracle said its Extended Maintenance product — which includes bug fixes — will not be available, and it could define no time limits for support beyond December 31.

“Those who chose to remain on e3000 with Oracle 7.3.4 are not covered by any kind of support contract, but Oracle will take their calls and make online support available to them,” said Oracle PR spokesperson Kristin Kryway. “The fact that they are not covered by an official contract is the difference, as well as the fact that Oracle development will not issue any new bug fixes/patches after December 31, 2000.”

The five months to the end of support is “a pretty tight time frame, and we’ll both need to work with our customers to make sure our customers and partners are taken care of,” Martino said. CSY has been discussing the situation for about six months with its software vendors, and the division has been advising some customers that long on a transition strategy.

At least two HP 3000 software partners rely on Oracle software for their applications, IFS and Multiview. One says the disappearing Oracle support won’t impact his installed base.

“These kind of things happen from time to time,” said Multiview Software CEO John Leslie about the Oracle decision to not port Version 8. “The only way to overcome it is that HP’s got to reach into their pocket and make it happen if they think it’s important.”

But Martino said that Oracle “has made the decision not to allow us to port Oracle 8 onto the 3000. They’re not doing the work, and they would not entertain options to allow us to do the work. We’ve exhausted the options. We tried various options to do something with them, and this just wasn’t something they wanted to do.”

Oracle representatives didn’t want to comment on the company’s decision to drop MPE development, other than to say that various factors go into such decisions, including market share and sales. Leslie said the company, which remains a partner with Multiview on the HP 9000 and NT, must have taken a look Oracle’s scant presence in the 3000 market.

“The main issue is that HP wasn’t selling any [3000] Oracle, basically,” Leslie said. “I think Oracle said, ‘You guys are generating a thimbleful of revenue, and it’s not enough.’ They’re pretty hard-nosed about these things.” Martino said Oracle was “very confident” in telling CSY about its decision.

The database company which recently shed its COO and has posted record profits for the past year holds more than 65 percent of the database market by some analysts’ reckoning. Martino said she believes support of the 3000 by Oracle isn’t a comment on the platform’s viability.

“I don’t see this as some bellwether sign that the 3000 won’t be able to move forward,” she said. “We won’t be able to offer Oracle moving forward. For the vast majority of our customers and partners, that won’t be an issue.”

Multiview’s Leslie said his company will rely on its continuing partnership with Oracle to support the hundreds of sites running his financial application on 3000, regardless of Oracle’s support.

Martino maintained that the 3000 is not the only computer to fall outside Oracle’s plans for continued support.

“It’s not just the 3000 they’re picking on,” Martino said. “They’ve tiered their platforms, and they have a very few tier 1 platforms they want to move forward on. There are other platforms that are affected as well.” Martino didn’t want to comment on the other platforms that aren’t on Oracle’s tier 1 list, and Oracle wasn’t able to identify other platforms being dropped as of presstime.

Most of the 3000’s application partners “are not looking to move their whole application to Oracle,” Martino added. New 3000 sales are coming almost exclusively through application sales.