Unix Growth Still Outpaces Win NT

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 12.7 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 60 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 far 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."