Wherever the truth lies, enterprise customers tend to wait until such disputes work themselves out before making any major commitments. The Unix world attracts fragmentation like honey draws flies. Conventional wisdom suggests IA-64 may sort this out if the big Unix companies come together on the forthcoming Intel chip. Little chance of that. Hey, this is Unix.
Many sizes fit few.
Traditionally, the computer industry defies conventional logic. And there's little reason to expect that trend won't continue when we all get jarred by the next seismic platform hardware shift in computing. You've got IA-64 all figured out. Well then, tell us what's going on. No matter how you connect to the Internet, it's never fast enough.