NT overtakes Unix sales

Microsoft's NT operating system moved ahead of Unix in the workstation market for the first time, according to figures from research company IDC.

In 1997 IDC puts NT shipments in this sector at 1.3 million - an increase of over 80 per cent on the previous year - compared with 666,000 for Unix, a decline of seven per cent.

In 1996, sales were neck and neck, but NT has now snatched market share in Unix territory.

John Pattenden, product marketing manager at Sequent, which offers Unix and NT, said: "Unix used to dominate for technical areas and NT in the commercial area, but the parameters have merged as NT has improved in functionality and Intel processors are faster with more capability."

The vendors most affected by the changing OS positions are Sun Microsystems and Hewlett Packard. In 1997 HP shifted almost 50,000 more workstations than Sun because Sun only sells Unix boxes. HP dominated the NT side of the market with 17.2 per cent of units.

IDC believes that 1998 will see Unix vendors differentiating their servers from NT rivals on the basis of their greater scalability, security and clustering features.

It pointed out that Unix has advantages - for instance, its clustering functionality is more developed than NT's.