The writing was on the wall once Linux was a thing. I did alot of solution design in that period. The only times there were good business cases in my world for not-x86 were scenarios where DBAs and some vertical software required Sun, and occasionally AIX or HPUX for license optimization or some weird mainframe finance scheme.

The cost structure was just bonkers. I replaced a big file server environment that was like $2M of Sun gear with like $600k of HP Proliant.

And by ~2000 there were also increasingly viable x86 offerings in CAD, 3D and video editing.

You had AutoCAD, you had 3D Studio Max, you had After Effects, you had Adobe Premiere. And it was solid stuff - maybe not best-in-class, but good enough, and the price was right.