State of the NOS: Reader Survey

	Results of an e-mail survey sent to 500 randomly selected Network Computing readers. Readers were selected from those involved with the NOS purchase process. Rate the Following Issues in order of importance when selecting a NOS (lower is better) Stability and Reliability 1.91 Applications and 3rd Party Support 4.53 File/Print/Directory Performance 4.47 Manageability 4.04 Total Cost of Ownership 5.24 Standards Support 5.15 Reputation of NOS vendor 6.63 Support Provided by the Vendor 5.39 Security 4.63 Hardware Support 6.59 Where do you spend most of your IT dollars in relation to NOS selection: Server Hardware costs 28.07% Infrastructure Costs 19.30% Aministrative costs 14.03% Client Support Costs 15.79% Server Support Costs 7.02% Application Software Costs 14.03% Client upgrade costs 1.75% Have you made a strategic NOS change within the last 18 months: Yes 41.38% No 58.62% How many sites make up your corporate WAN? Less than 5 43.60% 6 to 10 18.18% 11 to 20 5.45% Over 20 32.73% How Many Users at your site? Less than 100 22.64% 100 to 500 30.18% 500 to 2500 22.64% 2500 to 10000 18.87% over 10000 5.66% How many users at your en tire company? Less than 100 16.36% 100 to 500 21.82% 500 to 2500 18.18% 2500 to 10000 12.73% over 10000 30.91% Please rank each NOS for each category from 1 to 5 (1 being WEAK and 5 being STRONG). Price UNIX 3.33 NT 3.34 NetWare 3.36 Interoperability UNIX 3.27 NT 3.33 NetWare 3.41 Performance UNIX 3.96 NT 3.29 NetWare 3.51 Cost of Ownership UNIX 3.04 NT 3.22 NetWare 3.32 Hardware Support UNIX 3.09 NT 3.31 NetWare 3.52 Ease of Use UNIX 2.65 NT 3.59 NetWare 3.4 Administrative Capabilities UNIX 3 NT 3.43 NetWare 3.62 File and Print capabilities UNIX 3.05 NT 3.41 NetWare 4.07 Application Hosting Capabilities UNIX 3.47 NT 3.69 NetWare 2.95 Application Support UNIX 3.09 NT 3.67 NetWare 3.3