NT was architected to handle high-end workstations from day one — there’s a reason why running the GUI was mandatory even when the resource costs were fairly substantial.
Check out e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1 for the history of that era. The big selling point was that your business could code against one API everywhere, rather than having DOS PCs and expensive Unix, VAX, etc. hardware which was completely different and only a few people on staff were comfortable with.
OS/2 was a high end desktop OS, but NT diverged a little and took some heavy design principles from VMS (hence it’s name, WNT) and was thusly pivoted towards back office systems rather than desktop usage.
At that time Microsoft’s server offering was a UNIX platform, Xenix, but it was becoming clear that there needed to be a platform to serve workstations that wasn’t a full blown mainframe. So
Microsoft handed Xenix to SCO to focus on their collaboration with IBM so the intent there was always to build something more than just high end workstation. And Given it was intended to be administrated by people who were Windows users rather than UNIX grey beards (like myself) it clearly made sense to make the GUI a first class citizen; but that doesn’t mean it was sold to be a desktop OS.
My point was that it is misleading to say it was billed as a server OS when all of their messaging was that it was both — maybe not as far down as low-end desktops but they were very clear that any serious work could be done on NT, going after the higher end PC and lower end workstation business.
In that era workstations weren’t the same things as desktops. They were an entirely different class of computers and often workstations just ran server OSs with a nicer UI (Next, SGI, etc). So you’re point about workstations doesn’t invalidate what I was saying about NT not originally targeting desktops.
Check out e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1 for the history of that era. The big selling point was that your business could code against one API everywhere, rather than having DOS PCs and expensive Unix, VAX, etc. hardware which was completely different and only a few people on staff were comfortable with.