Sun has hit back at Hewlett-Packard's 'Linux Lifeline' migration offer for Sun customers. Sun said the plan, which offers $25,000 worth of free porting services to users moving off Solaris to HP Linux, was a "PR campaign with little substance, no real money and no value proposition".

The company did not come up with any positive incentives for Solaris users to stay loyal, instead choosing to question HP's viability and its commitment to its own Unix implementation, HP-UX. "HP's Enterprise Systems division continues to lose money at an increasing rate and creating the illusion of buying business at $25,000 a pop is not going to help improve its bottom line," Sun spokespeople said.

The company pointed out that the offer applies only to Linux, throwing doubt on the future of HP-UX, and sought to worry customers by saying that HP's real interest is in printers and consumer products, not enterprise computers.

HP's new offer was a direct response to Sun's own 'HP Away' program, launched in July, which offers a two-week free assessment and favorable payment terms for customers considering moving from the former Digital Equipment Alpha/Tru64 architecture that HP acquired with Compaq to Solaris.

"Sun's HP Away is a substantial program with a real value proposition to solve the problems, issues and headaches caused by HP abandoning its installed base," said Larry Singer, Sun's senior vice president of global market strategies. "This is a last gasp effort by HP to show they are still serious about the enterprise, and not just a consumer products company."

© Copyright Rethink Research Associates 2003.

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