Announcing its post-acquisition plans for Sun Microsystems's Unix systems, Oracle Corp. - in its front-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Thursday - said that it would endorse Sun's hardware product lines, and undertake substantial expenses to develop Sun's Sparc-based servers and Unix-based Solaris operating system.

The advertisement, which is aimed at "Sun customers" to encourage them to continue using the Sparc and Solaris platforms, comes at a time when customers are postponing their purchases of new servers due to the ambiguity resulting from Oracle's pending $7.4 billion takeover of Sun -- the merger has been stalled by an antitrust query by the European Commission.

The long-drawn-out merger, which was announced by Oracle in April, is not only eroding Sun's value but also helping its rivals, IBM and Hewlett-Packard, in their unrelenting pursuit of Sun's core customer base - the users of Sun's Sparc and Solaris products.

The recent advertisement reflects Oracle's desperation to go through with the acquisition at the earliest; but the proceedings would likely be on hold for another quarter, with the EC to review "serious concerns" about merger's impact on the database market.

Meanwhile, the ad, reiterating Oracle's promise to boost Sparc and Solaris' service and support, also quoted the Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison, thus: "We're in it to win it. IBM, we're looking forward to competing with you in the hardware business!"