Sun’s customer base includes many government agencies, financial firms, telcos and other large enterprises highly coveted by rival vendors. Competitors believe Sun’s customers are anxious about Sun being purchased by a software company, as well as and that Sun has a powerful server chip with 16 cores.

Sales programs specifically designed to lure customers away from rival vendors are commonplace, but vendors have become significantly more aggressive in making competitive moves against Sun since the April 20 that Oracle would buy the company.

“We’re very focused on the top tier of Sun customers, which have been the hardest to crack in the past,” says Scott Handy, vice president of marketing, strategy and sales support for IBM Power Systems.

But Sun customers were already showing a willingness to switch. “We made the decision to stop purchasing Sun hardware long before the [Oracle] agreement was sealed,” says Rick Scherer, a systems administrator at the San Diego Data Processing Corp., which provides IT services to the San Diego municipal government. Scherer has been phasing out Sun hardware in favor of HP x86 servers running VMware.

Bigger-than-usual discounts