McPhee said the health insurer, which is using Sun UltraSparc systems for its Web tier, is moving to a "more commodity-based infrastructure" based on x86 systems running either AMD or Intel processors.

McPhee said when his firm started using Web applications in 2000, Sun dominated and vendors were targeting applications for Solaris. "Things have changed," said McPhee, "We just went with the momentum."

McPhee said he will go with the vendor that offers the best deal; Sun's x86 AMD servers are in the running, he added.

Stephen Josselyn, an IDC analyst, said Sun, like every other vendor selling RISC-based systems in the low end, is "fighting that same battle" against x86.

"As we look at this from a Unix perspective, that seems to be the trend -- customers are moving away from the RISC/Unix environment and are choosing the more commodity-based x86 platforms," Josselyn said.