None of the CIOs interviewed ' either those that stayed with Novell or those that switched to Microsoft ' said they felt social or political pressure to stick with Novell.

'Our governor knows that we use Novell, but he's never told us to keep using them,' said Darrus McBride, manager of systems engineering and operations for the Utah state government. The state has long used NetWare and Novell Directory Services, now eDirectory, and added Novell's identity management products in 2001.

'We've periodically tested Microsoft products but haven't found any compelling reason to migrate off what we're using,' McBride said. As his staff gains Linux skills, the state is moving towards Novell's Open Enterprise Server and Suse Linux, he said.

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Nashua, N.H.-based Illuminata, believes that Novell is starting to do the little things ' such as increasing the number of applications certified to run on Suse Linux to several thousand from just a handful several years ago ' that make upgrading to its Linux solutions attractive to NetWare users.

But former NetWare users such as Nu Skin's Wilson said the low prices and strong support he gets from Microsoft means there's little chance he would switch back.