A Look at Windows Server Outselling Linux 450
THG writes "CoolTechZone.com has an interesting look at Linux's position in the market now that Microsoft has sold more Windows Server software than Linux. From the article: "The most important reason that Windows based servers are doing so well could be that programmers find it extremely easy to work on .Net and other related technologies (seamless integration). Plus, you have hassle free and rapid support from Microsoft, which is a comforting feature for corporate customers. When Windows Live comes in, we will see further integration between the server and online technical support areas, thereby making the troubleshooting process easier for in-house administrators and reducing overhead costs for the company."
Re:from a different viewpoint: (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft technicial support is outstanding (Score:3, Informative)
I rang Microsoft the other day. It was a fantastic experience. After getting somebody on first line support who clearly had no idea what I was talking about, after 5 minutes he transfered me to 2nd line support - in India. With a several second phone lag, I explained the problem repeatedly. After 30 minutes - 30 MINUTES - I got the patch I first rang for.
Yes, that's hassle free and rapid.
Re:Is it April Fools alreay? (Score:4, Informative)
In my career, I've experienced poorer support with other software vendors.
Then again, the company I work for is a Microsoft Partner. That could make a difference.
Re:Gartner... (Score:5, Informative)
First, the study says that Windows based Servers accounted for 37 percent in revenue. Now traditionally, Windows based systems are more expensive than Linux based systems, so even if vendors sold lesser number of Windows systems, the price difference could ensure that Windows sales revenue was higher. This implies that, in terms of pure numbers, Linux could very well have outsold Windows.
Furthermore the article says that Linux servers account for 31.7% as opposed to Windows' 37%. To paint this as anything other than a success for Linux (which is either free, as in the case of the parent, or likely cheaper than the Windows alternative) is a little strange.
Personally I'm not seeing the point of posting this blog entry but learning those numbers was a little interesting I guess.
Here is the 3Q breakdown (Score:3, Informative)
Linux $1.44B 11.53%
Other $2.55 20.42%
Windows $4.60 36.83%
Unix $3.90 31.22%
Total $12.49 100.00%
Now ask what "Other" is. Mainframe OS and AS400 is 10% tops the rest is servers bought without OS Guess what is being installed on those?
. MS invested in Gartner here a few years back, since that no Units is being published only Value. By the wya the Linux partion went yp 37% in value and 22% unit (they poublished the growth not the absolute numbers) menaning the average price of Linux servers is rising 10%.
Re:Surprised (Score:1, Informative)
Re:In related news.... (Score:3, Informative)
Who's buying Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
Well that's probably true because most of us don't buy Linux -- we simply download it. But the fact that corporate types are buying preinstalled Linux servers at a rate to nearly equal Microsoft says something about Linux in general.
Re:Microsoft technicial support is outstanding (Score:2, Informative)
Not sure why you seemed to have such a bad experience, but getting a hotfix has never been an issue for me, as long as I can remember to press 1.
NO OS couints as Windows at Dell (Score:5, Informative)
If you buy a blade server without OS specified It comes with something called "No Operating System Microsoft Configuration [Included in Price]" and is counted as Windwos servers
Look for yourselves Dell Bladeserver" [dell.com]
This article is a Misleading troll. (Score:5, Informative)
It's bullshit. Nobody is shocked that Windows outsells Linux. Windows Server has ALWAYS outsold Linux. Linux outselling Windows would be NEWS.
And Linux doesn't account for 31% of total server revenue.. It accounts for fucking 12% of server revenue.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/11/23/server_sales_q3
The only news is that NEW linux sales (as in more sold this quarter then previous) rose 34+ percent, or something like this.
This has been 12 straight quarters which new server sales for Linux growth has risen double digits. There have been quarters were Linux growth has been 54% NEW sales over the previous quarter's sales. Linux is increasing it's precense in the datacenter and in the server room like a fucking rocket. Always has been, but until recently Linux has been a very small fish in a big pond. Now it's the second most common OS that your going to see anywere.
The news this guy is refering to is that Windows outsold UNIX, not Linux. Linux is recorded in a seperate catagory..
This isn't due to anything wonderfull Windows does. The main reason you'd want to run Windows Server is that you run Windows Desktop because Microsoft's products don't integrate with jack shit. But everybody runs Windows desktop and windows desktop only works well with windows server unless you have a mixed enviroment then you use Linux as glue between MS stuff and everything else.
The main reason that Unix servers sales have flagged is because Linux, not Windows. Linux is MUCH cheaper to use then Unix.
Hell in this quarter alone Sun has dropped from 7+ % of sales to under 5% and that's due to Linux. Most of Oracle licenses and such that are sold are sold to be run on Linux.
However that has had the side effect of making Windows the largest market in terms of sales..
Which is still bullshit because if you take Unix and Linux together, which you should since they are mostly compatable and run all the same software, then Windows server is still the minority and always has been.
Netcraft's data says (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah and the moon is made out of green cheese. (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, this comes from the same man (Varun Dubey) who said:
"XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use" makes the slightly high price absolutely worth it. In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem! Give me a break guys, Linux is light years behind Windows XP and I am sure it will be further back biting the dust when Longhorn (now Vista) comes out."
Dumbass.
Re:Gartner...Money for nothing, labour for free. (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.com.com/Subscription+boom+boosts+Red+
http://www.signal42.com/soaring_linux_sales_doubl
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,62
then. Apparently some people are making money from it.
Re:According to who? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:NO OS couints as Windows at Dell (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. "TCO" has been around forever. Mac zealots regularly rolled out the "MacOS has better TCO than Windows" arguments back in the early (and mid, and late) 90s (in reference to a single TCO comparison of MacOS 7.x and Windows 3.0, IIRC).
"TCO" is a pretty well known term in a business environment (which is probably why so few people on Slashdot have heard of it outside Linux-Windows fluff articles).
Clueless article (Score:5, Informative)
First, the article makes the mistake in merely comparing Windows and Linux. In omitting any analysis in what is going on with UNIX, MacOS X (yeah, I know it has a UNIX-like kernel but much of the rest of the setup is almost but not quite entirely unlike UNIX), any context to these numbers is omitted. What is happening, however, is that three trends are occuring which are noteworthy:
1) Proprietary UNIX's market share is shrinking.
2) Windows and Linux are gaining market share in terms of absolute deployments on the server side.
3) *Some* of these deployments are counted in the sale of new servers. but not all.
Even so, Linux's marketshare is still up, as is Windows. These are the only two OS's to have been significantly gaining marketshare in server market (well, maybe MacOS, but it is hard not to gain from about 0% a few years ago). I would argue that WIndows is gaining because it is familiar, and Linux is gaining because it is like that it is replacing. Both operating systems claim to be easier to administrate than proprietary UNIX (I certainly think Linux is, but I think that non-trivial tasks in Windows are actually harder than with proprietary UNIX).
Now, something seems fishy to me about this study in another way. In the 2000 IDC study (iirc) NT4 and 2000 accounted for about 37% of the market share by volume. Linux was much lower than that. If the IDC is correct and Windows market share has indeed been growing from 2000 to 2002 (when I stopped reading the study) then either they have slipped in market share, Linux sells for more, Gartner is underestimating Windows' market share, or the IDC is overestimating the market share of WIndows. Perhaps even some combination of the above explenations.
Now... I used to work at Microsoft's PSS. I can tell you their support is nothing to write home about. They aren't someone you call because you need expert advice. If you are reasonably knowledgable, you call them for a second opinion. If you are a novice you call them for mentoring. But you can get braindead answers occasionally from them. I remember being on the phone with a customer and conferencing someone in from the SQL Server support team who said that it was not possible to set a value to NULL once it had been set to another value. Somehow I don't think that this was right but I have not had a chance to test it. Then there are the issues where the technicians advocate best practices whithout understanding *why* they are best practices. And this was all before so much of it was sent to India
Finally the idea that an ad-supported Windows would be the end of Linux is laughable. I think that this would be the beginning of the end of Windows, not of Linux. Hmm... 2 free products. One is adware the other is not. Which should I choose?
In short this article makes mistakes such as:
1) assuming that market share by revenue has any reasonable correlation to actual deployments.
2) refusing to take into account the broader market trends that form the context of this study.
This article smacks of MS shilling.
What is the relation to previous quarters? (Score:2, Informative)
Those two questions weren't asked in all the posts with a threshold of three or better yet. While the articles put up by news.com.com.com.com and other tech news sites almost always include previous quarters and the previous year's same quarter comparisons, they also normally include estimated unit sales. If the tech news site is biased toward Microsoft, or in the case of analysts with brown noses, the unit sales estimates are normally buried at the bottom of articles since those numbers are almost always bad news for Microsoft and reflect the 25-50% compounded growth rate of GNU/Linux systems.
Another thing to consider this quarter and possibly the next couple of quarters going forward is the news that computer hardware sales are higher than expected and strong. In this environment, Microsoft will be posting record sales again since more companies are upgrading, more companies will be reluctant to switch from the status quo, and with current good economic growth in the US along with a good short/medium term economic growth outlook, there will be less pressure to cut costs, search for cheaper options, etc. The more this is true, the more momentum there will be for maintaining the status quo in terms of keeping what you know and upgrading, vs. a migration to a technology that a particular company has less expertise on.
Linux has been capturing the majority of migrations from Unix, beating Microsoft in this category. This isn't news, its been reported repeatedly for more than a year. But at some point, the number of Unix installations left will become insignificant. It won't be enough to affect market share numbers in any substantial amount any more. Once the Unix load has been shot, then what remains will be Linux against Windows for current Windows installations. At that point, growth in Linux market share and Linux unit share will slow, but it won't stop. That will be the point when the real market share strengths will be determined. And that determination won't be possible for many months afterward, since it will take time to report the numbers and then interpret what they really mean.
My take of just the numbers reported in the article? Linux has a larger unit share of servers as compared to Microsoft, and therefore a bigger market share. As others have pointed out, free download/installs aren't included, free generic versions of enterprise editions aren't included, and Microsoft is falsifying their numbers by manipulating numbers from Dell and others.
At some point Microsoft won't be able to hide the damage it is suffering from OpenOffice.org, nor will it be able to hide the damage from market share losses and massive discounting to attempt to retain market share. If this comes out when Microsoft is setting new records in sales due to a strong economy it may soften the impact. But if it comes out during a quarter of stagnant sales, watch out. The stock will seriously drop, and the SEC may start sniffing around Microsoft's numbers as they did when the cell phone carriers manipulated their customer numbers. Should that happen, there will be a few quarters of turmoil as the investigation drags on, and then we may see a settlement with the SEC over Microsoft reporting more accurate numbers (with no admission of guilt of course).
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, according to the sources I find, it gets attributed to Gartner group in 1987, so I would hardly consider it forever. Businesses have always been interested in finding out what the bottom line is, but trying to consider every cost through-out the lifetime of an asset hasn't really been very feasible until we got computers with decent spreadsheet capability.
ComputerWorld's reporting of the same report (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
I once asked a CIO if I should keep track of what the software we installed on a server costs and whether we should balance that against the monetary benefits of the said software and he just looked at me like I was nuts. Apparently you are not allowed to actually keep track of TCO, you are just supposed to read about it in gartner reports.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
TCO in relation to servers probably did not exist before servers.
TCO is widely taught in sales courses as a marketing tool used by people whose solution is too expensive to justify the additional cost. Its in the same boat with "Yes we are the most expensive, its cos we are the best".
The whole point of getting an MBA is so you know to use these things on the competition, and not have them used on yourself. Of course, if you got your MBA from one of those places offering them for $5 on the internet, you might not have to do any actual learning.
Re:Not to mention.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gartner... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not to mention.... (Score:3, Informative)
They're nothing wonderful, but they're better than a cheap desktop - as they have PCI-X - for basic server duty in isolated areas, especially if you're putting linux on them.
No OS required with HP Servers! (Score:2, Informative)
On a seperate rant, the ML110s really are nothing more than a glorified PC. My personal favourite is the ML350, which had hot-plug HDD, hot-plug redundant PSU, redundant fan, dual processor, all good! For £1,399 you can get an ML350 G4, Xeon 3GHz, 2 x HP 72GB HDD, 1GB PC3200 Advanced DDR, HP redundant PSU & redundant fan. Bargain! And it'll run Redhat!
Re:Not to mention.... (Score:2, Informative)