RISC servers v/s Intel servers

Hi, as you probably know, this is much larger than just the "brand A" vs. "brand B" debate. We use both Intel-based and RISC-based servers in our shop, but we are NOT running Oracle, so you may want to discount my opinion to even less than (my) $.02 worth.
In our experience, RISC servers (running UNIX) are more expensive to purchase, more scalable, and somewhat more reliable than Intel servers running Windows. You need to evaluate this based on factors including:
the number of simultaneous client sessions you need to support, the expected size and growth rate of your database, the size and skills level of your support staff, current and future budget. That being said, my choice for a large, mission-critical database, available 24/7 tohundreds of users would certainly be the RISC server, acknowledging that I'll spend significantly more money to implement it! If, on the other hand, my task was a local small-to-medium sized business who needed customer, inventory, work-flow, document control, etc. implemented economically (with plans to "outgrow" the system in 3 to 5 years), I'd probably make them happy with an Intel-Windows network solution. Hope this helps.

--Will