Sun will be fine - they will be a smaller company, selling to customers in a space where relability, stability and performance are important. we had a drive go bad on a Sun recently - it had not been rebooted in 6 years. try that with anything else.
Managers, Directors, VPs don't think about those things when they sign a check for a bunch of i386 platform harddrives @ $300 per harddrive vs whatever [higher quality] SUN drives. Being a techie myself, I know what you stated is true, but the uneducated, immediate cost driven managers don't understand.
AIX?