Unix out paces NT

["Stephen J. Gaudet" <sjg dcginc com>]

Unix Growth Still Outpaces Win NT
                    (10/29/98 5:40 a.m. ET)
                    By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb 

The most recent Dataquest survey of Unix and
Windows NT Server market share shows Unix is not
only keeping its lead, but also extending it.

According to market researcher Dataquest, Unix growth
is accelerating and outpacing that of NT. Unix server
usage grew 18.6 percent in the past two years, from a
36 percent market share in 1996 to 42.7 percent in
the second quarter of this year. NT, by contrast, grew
67 percent, from 9.7 percent in 1996 to 16.2 percent
in 1998. 

NT, now 6 years old and in its third major revision, is
still behind the more mature Unix, according to Kim
Brown, chief analyst with Dataquest, based in San Jose,
Calif. 

"NT is far behind where the state of the art is, and it
has a long way to go," Brown said. 

Unix is fighting to keep its lead. This week, IBM said it
will team with SCO and Sequent Computer Systems to
develop a new version of Unix for computers using
Intel's IA-64 chip. And Sun Microsystems released
Solaris 7.0, a major facelift to its brand of Unix,
offering 64-bit computing for the first time. 

NT has fallen behind Unix because it lacks the
performance and scalability needed for heavy
data-center work, as well as its ever-increasing price
tag, Brown said. Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition,
the high-end version of NT, costs $3,999 or more,
making the OS almost as expensive as the hardware. 

But the Unix market is consolidating as it expands,
according to another analyst. "The Unix market will be
reinvigorated because of a Darwinian streamline effect
that will weed out the weaker players," said George
Weiss, research director at Stamford, Conn.-based
Gartner Group. 

"Users will have easier options, [total cost of
ownership] could diminish if they don't have to
handle multiple variance of OSes, and they [will] have
fewer, larger, more dependable suppliers," Weiss said. 

Sun is one of those dependable suppliers. Despite the
entrenchment of Solaris, the company has picked up a
trick or two from Linux, Weiss said, promoting a
program to offer Solaris 7.0 free to developers and
educational institutions, particularly students. 

But Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun said it's not trying to
compete with Linux. "Where [the Solaris giveaway] will
eat up market share is Windows and NT on PCs," said
Sanjay Sinha, group marketing manager for Solaris.
Since the new promotion was introduced in August,
40,000 developers, schools, and students have
requested their free copy of Solaris, and more than 80
percent of the copies were for Intel computers, he said. 

In promotional materials for Solaris 7.0, the free offer
for developers and the education market is front and
center. "If that doesn't look like the Linux model, I
don't know what it does," Weiss said. 

Sun is also embracing Linux by licensing the source
code for the Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.2 and Java
Compatibility Kit (JCK) 1.2 test suite to Steve Byrnes, a
former SunSoft programmer who is working on an
official Linux port. 

Much of the code already compiles and works on
Linux, Byrnes said. All that remains are things such as
the audio and color-matching subsystems. Byrnes said
he hopes to have something ready by the end of November. 

Full Linux JDK and JCK support will aid Linux's success,
said Weiss. 

"That's a good combo, Linux and Java," he said. "They
both cater to quick, more simple types of applications.
Getting Java on Linux is one of the items I've felt Linux
needs to make it into the enterprise."  

Cheers,


                     

Steve
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