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In fact, they feel better about Oracle buying Sun than IBM, which contradicts what IBM claimed earlier, that Oracle's ownership was scaring off Sun customers.

"I think most of our customers have been pretty loyal to Sun, and had IBM bought them there might have been some concerns about the long-term strategy and support for Sparc and Solaris. I think with Oracle buying them, there's more long-term comfort of a commitment to the OS and chips," said Calderwood.

HP Wants a Piece

While some Sun loyalists hang in there, HP is still gunning for their business. Like IBM, it has its own strategy for luring away customers. While IBM has its Migration Factory, HP has what it calls Sun Complete Care.

This service includes free migration and total cost of ownership assessments, free Oracle Applications migration assessment, free SAP customer infrastructure assessment service, free SAP TCO analysis service, server trade-in credits and rebates and between 50 to 85 percent off HP-UX 11i systems with Solaris trade-in.

And HP does have services giant EDS under the same roof to help with migration and integration. Its Sun Complete Care program also has resources to help them migrate Solaris-based apps to the operating environment of their choice.

While Calderwood and to a degree Vallee said that Sun customers are hanging tough, Lorraine Bartlett, HP vice president of business critical systems, said there are defectors. "In the last 3 months, we've seen a 75 percent increase in partner opportunities against Sun through these channel partners," she told InternetNews.com.

"As the Oracle acquisition extends itself with the EC [investigation], we're seeing more customers recognize there is a lot of risk in staying on the Sun platform and that is inspiring them to come talk to HP. I think uncertainty begins to trump loyalty and commitment," she added.

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Internetnews.com West Coast Bureau Chief David Needle contributed to this article.

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