With the European Union finally giving approval to Oracle's $7.4bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems last week, IBM is stepping up efforts to exploit any untapped feelings of uncertainty in shops using Sun iron.

On Tuesday, IBM announced the addition of new software to its four-year-old “Migration Factory” vendor poaching program that makes it easier for businesses to push workloads from Sun into a Big Blue embrace.

The company said its improved Oracle-phobia prescription plan helps automate several of the processes necessary for anti-Sun migration, such as sniffing out and identifying Sun assets, provisioning the new target IBM environment, and streamlining workload transitions.

The software promises a speedier move from Sun Solaris to either Linux or IBM's AIX operating systems, migrating both applications and middleware.

Although IBM's poaching technique for Sun customers isn't new – the company clearly hopes to shake out any anti-Oracle stragglers as the official date of marriage looms closer. Oracle's chief executive Larry Ellison is scheduled to outline a strategy for the combined companies and their roadmaps tomorrow during a webcast. The event is expected to lay out Oracle's future plans in hardware and software.

IBM hopes to stir up concerns of Sun's new ownership by stirring up unproven fears. “The future of Sun's hardware business is highly uncertain given its imminent acquisition by Oracle,” IBM said on its Sun server migration page. “There's also been speculation in the press on whether Sun will cancel Rock, its next-generation chip project.”

Big iron vendors like IBM are always especially eager to circle over the remains of companies freshly processed for acquisition. On the same day, Sun shareholders voted in favor of the Oracle deal, HP unveiled its Sun Complete Care program, offering Sun shops free migration and total cost of ownership assessments if they consider dropping Sun iron for HP.

IBM's Migration Factory shop also offers incentives to abandon Dell, EMC, and of HP kit. HP pitches the reverse favor in return. ®