Microsoft Corp’s paper on Windows NT and Unix Interoperability and Competition – claims that more than 60% of Unix customers are evaluating or considering NT, and that of all the applications being converted for NT, 25% are coming from Unix, VMS and MVS. Microsoft recognises Novell Inc and Sun Microsystems Inc as its strongest competition, but says Novell is pushing two technologies – NetWare and Unix – that are difficult to install, use, integrate and support together. Sun, it continues, is the first Unix vendor to offer fully compatible systems on both Intel Corp iAPX-86 and RISC, and may include credible support for Win16 applications. But, says the document, Sun is having trouble penetrating the commercial market, and disconcerted its customers twice by switching from Berkeley Unix to System V.4 and more recently by supporting COSE and Motif. The paper highlights market fragmentation and competing standards, inconsistent implementations of advanced features such as security and multiprocessing, difficulty of use, inconsistent user interface, terminal host design, poor application design, functionality and performance problems with X, difficult systems administration and lack of access control lists as the major weaknesses of Unix. Windows NT, on the other hand, is powerful, reliable, open and client-server. Oh well, that’s all right then.
