'That could also leave HPE the last vendor to keep an honest-to-goodness Unix alive all the way to half-way through the next decade.'
Um, what? Despite the random mention of Oracle not wanting to support their /database software/ on Itanium systems, they're still producing Solaris and despite IBM not selling Itaniums they're still selling AIX on POWER. I'm not aware that either of those is going away any time soon.