I’m not convinced that was much of a reason. Windows NT 4 Server pricing was similar, with licenses needed for each client connecting, plus additional licensing for the OS running on those clients.
Microsoft's license was soft, and depending on the customer buying enough paper to cover, if you could even find a reseller that could describe how to properly license Windows Server (exteremely doubtful).
OOTH, Novell's licensing was a hard limit. Once that # of workstations logged in, those without a license were hosed.
On all the jobs I did in those days, Novell networks at each customer site _never_ had enough licenses to cover every workstation. There was always somebody left out and they had to go bug people to see if they were done with the network so they could get in their tasks. Nobody ever seemed to overprovision their licenses to cover every single workstation (or even to have extra).
I never met a company using Microsoft server that properly had their CALs licensed, and they didn't want to hear it from me. Finding somebody to sell you the proper CALs was an interesting exercise.
Most other network server OSes at the time (the Unix vendors were trying hard in this space in those early days too) also had hard licenses. Which was part of why they didn't gain traction at all.
They could easily break the fake KMS but choose not to. It speaks a lot to their priorities.
Microsoft can tell us all they want that the telemetry is just for product usage. When the first slow quarter comes around they're going to gaze longingly at that huge treasure trove of data they have and start asking themselves if selling it won't help them meet their quarterly projections.
I'm unsure if this still works with Windows 11, but judging by how the upgrade process works, I would guess so.
- Bill Gates
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.
NT was definitely cheaper, too. That made a difference in small deployments where I was often getting nickel-and-dimed.