Oracle urged to ditch hardware support policies

Vendor's overhaul of Sun product maintenance policies causes channel to hit out

The channel has thrown its weight behind a US trade-body campaign to make vendor giant Oracle rethink its hardware maintenance policies.

The Service Industry Association (SIA) has taken umbrage to a series of rule changes introduced by Oracle governing the way support for Sun hardware is handled.

For instance, software patches that were freely available to Sun hardware users are now only accessible to customers that go direct to Oracle for product support.

End users that use third-party maintenance providers and then decide to use Oracle's support services also have to pay a fee.

The SIA said the policies, introduced following Oracle's buyout of Sun last year, are restricting trade because they discourage end users from shopping around for product support.

Speaking to ChannelWeb, SIA executive director Claudia Betzner described the policies as "anti-competitive" and "highly damaging".

"These are the most onerous set of maintenance polices in the IT industry today," she said. "Our fear is that if Oracle thinks it can get away with these, other vendors will follow suit and that could have devastating consequences for customers and service providers."

Betzner wrote to the European Union last month to appeal for help in overturning the policies.

In the letter, she warned that Oracle's actions could pave the way for the entire services market to become the "exclusive domain of manufacturers."

"Without the presence of independent service organisations in the hardware services market, support prices will rise because of lack of competitive pressures, thus affecting all end users globally, industry to government alike," it stated.

"The SIA requests that Oracle be compelled to cease and desist exercising their anti-competitive policies and keep the hardware maintenance market thriving and benefiting customers by allowing choice, flexibility and lower hardware costs of ownership."

The campaign has won the backing of several UK-based IT support firms who offer maintenance services for Sun products.

The managing director of one of the firms, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "We cannot believe that this package of changes is lawful and trust that the EU competition authorities will rule against Oracle as a matter of urgency to ensure these restrictive measures are not to be adopted by other suppliers."

A source from another firm said they fear the company could go one step further and withdraw the product support training available to third-party providers.

"It is quite difficult for them to police who takes part in the training, but all the signs suggest they want the maintenance market to themselves and that would be a logical next step," they said.

Oracle said it is unable to comment on the matter at this stage.