[brk]

This is roughly my recollection as well. Along with another comment above about lack of apps for Novell.

Every small business was going to be running Windows already, so an NT server was kind of a logical conclusion. Couple that with the fact that the NT server was likely cheaper to license (even if it was ultimately not properly licensed), and that the NT server at least offered the appearance of being more flexible and capable than a Novell server, and it made sense that NetWare died off.

As a reseller, I also seem to recall needing to have a bunch of techs certified on all the various Novell apps to get a good discount. I remember going for my Groupwise certification specifically so our company could get a better discount level from Novell to try and be more competitive. I think I only ever installed one GroupWise deployment.