Press reports that Windows NT is being adopted by organizations of all sizes for all kinds of applications are inaccurate where not outright wrong, according to a new report from International Data Crop (IDC). The report, titled Strategies for Windows NT in the Enterprise finds that the main use for Windows NT is not in mission-critical enterprise applications – as readers of the trade journals may have been led to think – but as a departmental server for file and print sharing, messaging and communications.
Microsoft is very good at momentum marketing, observed Dan Kusnetzky, author of the report, it can turn reports of strong growth in revenues, software license shipments or clients being supported into a message that Windows NT has become the de facto standard. But the IDC reports claims to show that Novell NetWare still has the marketing edge on NT for file and print sharing, directory services and communications. NetWare users say they love the platform’s strength and reliability. Meanwhile in transaction processing, database support and support for custom commercial and technical applications, Unix emerged as the clear winner.
IDC concludes by observing that very few organizations abandon the investments in computing that they have already made. In many cases, Windows NT has been brought in to work alongside the operating environments that were already in place in the mid- 1990s, said Kusnetzky, supporting the organization’s application portfolios rather than replacing them.
