Windows NT threatens to unseat Unix server market

Stunted growth is expected in the Unix server market by July next year as the sector will be unable to fight off the competition from Windows NT.

According to Paul McGuckin, vice president and research director of the Gartner Group, the high cost of continuing to develop and market their operating systems will force second-tier Unix vendors to merge and consolidate them.

Only two or three Unix variants from Hewlett Packard, Sun and IBM will remain, McGuckin said at the Enterprise Systems Conference. He did not see a long-term future for Digital Unix because it was not winning enough market share from top-tier vendors.

'Unix reaches a peak in 1998 and declines as second and third-tier Unix players leave the market. HP, Sun and IBM will remain strong, but the rest will move to NT. MVS will also stay strong, but will be adopted mostly by traditional mainframe users, with little Unix expertise and no need for new NT applications,' he predicted.

He added: 'NT will be used mainly by smaller shops and those who have resisted Unix for their core mission-critical applications. By the year 2000 it will be a viable alternative to back office applications and become the path of least resistance for AS/400 users.'

The AS/400 is not dying, he said: 'It continues to be popular and will be 24-way by this time next year, with improvements in high availability, but its biggest impediment is the lack of ISV enthusiasm and some leading applications will not be ported.'

The head of IT at the Marriott Hotel chain has called on suppliers to help users model an enterprise architecture that can respond to change in today's competitive environment. Barry Shuler, vice president of information resources and planning at the Marriott, attested that while modelling techniques were available, it was necessary to code most models by hand.