It’s no secret that competitors have observed Sun Microsystems’ M&A saga—first with IBM, then with Oracle—with a sense of glee. The time between talking about an acquisition and consummating the marriage is particularly challenging, given that the companies are bound by law and custom to act independently. Even given a definitive acquisition agreement, it’s impossible to be precise as to the fate and prospects for each product line. Customer and partner uncertainty is inevitable, even in the best of circumstances. And when the acquired company is struggling, as Sun has been, the uncertainly about what product lines will continue, or at what level of emphasis and investment, is considerably magnified.

Competitors have enthusiastically appealed to Sun customers to “move on over” while Sun’s future remains uncertain. Notable “Sun attack programs” include HP’s Sun Complete Care and IBM’s Migrate from Sun. HP’s “Life’s better in the shade” and IBM’s “SUN SET Special” are typical of the cheeky, provocative taglines common with such programs.

In truth, attack programs aren’t new. Every vendor has them; they, and the “competitive take-away” case studies they engender, are a staple of competitive marketing. The HP and IBM programs against Sun, for example, go back years. Sun, for its part, has had complementary attack programs against HP and IBM. While time and tide may be constant, one especially notices high or low tide. So it is here. In the last few quarters, competitors have notably ramped up their investments and pumped up their volume. They follow the old adage: “Make hay while the sun shines.”

Oracle/Sun are constrained in what they can say back, and how specific they can be. Oracle, however, has begun to return fire. It started this with a recent advertisement boasting that an upcoming transactional benchmark will trounce IBM’s ~6 million tpmC result. It’s stunning in several ways.

First, IBM’s 6M transactions/minute result is nothing short of fantastic. It’s 50% above any current Oracle result, at a lower price per transaction to boot. Moreover, it’s well above the performance requirements of almost every application currently deployed, anywhere in the world, for any purpose. Second, Sun has eschewed such benchmarks for years. A major SPARC-based benchmark result is unheard-of in recent memory. Finally, running TPC-C benchmarks at this this level is extremely expensive. Beating 6M tpmC would cost, what? $10M? $20M? More? That’s a substantial investment in achieving a single number, folks. Not to mention advertising it. Wall Street Journal placements don’t come cheap.

Clearly there’s marketing bravado involved. Do the TPC-C rules even allow such forward-looking statements? I didn’t think so. But it’s impressive bravado, no? Especially since Oracle seems to be putting its checkbook where its mouth is.

The latest shot over the bow is an ad proclaiming Oracle will spend more money developing both SPARC and Solaris than Sun does now, have twice as many hardware specialists selling and servicing SPARC/Solaris systems as Sun does now, and tightly integrate Oracle software with Sun hardware. More than these details, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is quoted: “We’re in it to win it. IBM, we’re looking forward to competing with you in the hardware business.”

The “in it to win” sentiment, from Oracle’s founder and supremo, may be seen as just more bravado, just more “Larry being Larry.” But I’m inclined to take it roughly at face value. Larry does indeed love to win. He’s making a multi-billion-dollar investment to acquire Sun, and even before the deal’s complete, is aggressively marketing against Sun’s competitors at a level that Sun hasn’t recently mustered. And the idea of an integrated play—Oracle systems and software together, not dependent on any other platform or go-to-market partner—this theme has long held sway in Larry’s aspirations.

Oracle is instrumental to HP’s and IBM’s Unix businesses. And they are instrumental to Oracle’s business. That Oracle will soon own Sun—the EU’s extended review notwithstanding—will not change this interdependency. However interdependent, these sometimes competitors, sometimes partners will continue to ridicule and impugn Oracle’s systems future as long as they can credibly get away with it. Oracle, however, is returning fire—acting every bit the proud parent of a systems business it intends to nurture.