"Otherwise, we will have to reinvest in infrastructure, training and support, and this added expense would bring no additional value to us," he said.

If support for the IBM server line is dropped, 29 percent of those surveyed said they wouldn't migrate to Fusion, while 50 percent said they weren't sure if they would upgrade under those conditions.

Support of IBM software is also critical, since 85 percent of respondents use IBM's DB2 database and 67 percent use it exclusively.

Oracle declined to comment on the survey.