NetWare BeWare NT

NCC survey predicts NT will usurp NetWare's market share.

NetWare will be overtaken by NT in 1999, according to a survey by the National Computing Centre (NCC).

The survey acknowledged that NetWare currently has the largest installed base of servers. However, it predicted that almost three-quarters of companies plan to increase NT server purchases, largely at the expense of NetWare.

Novell has dismissed the findings. "This is the sort of survey we've been seeing for years. Year in and year out they always predict we're going to be overtaken, but it's always going to happen next year. Obviously we take these things seriously, but a survey of 400 people won't give a fair and accurate picture of the international market," said David Blackman, Novell's product marketing manager for EMEA.

The NCC poll, sent to 4,500 IT users organisations, received 410 responses.

It concluded that Microsoft had managed to turn around scepticism, expressed by respondents in previous surveys, over NT's future as a mission-critical network operating system.

Narayana Jayaram, chairman of the BCS Network Specialist Group, agreed NT was enjoying impressive sales growth: "I don't know about the timescale, NetWare is still popular. But there is no doubt NT is progressing very fast."

Blackman denied NetWare's sales were suffering: "There is a very healthy market out there for everybody. For the last three years we have been increasing our NetWare sales by 100,000 servers a year. This year we will ship around one million servers. The rest of the market combined barely realises these levels."