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Gartner Group Squints At Future OS Growth
Icebox writes: "Cnet is offering up this bit from GartnerGroup that includes their predictions for the next few years in the OS market. Their predictions are aimed stricly at the business side of this but it is interesting to see how their ideas stack up against what Slashdot's readership expects. Pay particular attention to Factor #9."
While many users may consider linux more powerful, etc, they often forget to consider the learning curve. Unix systems are harder to use, lets face it. Linux, BSD, etc, will continue to be powerful, and crash less often, but windows being more "assume the user is an idiot when programming" oriented, it will continue to have a good part of the market. IMHO, unix should be used for servers and for the workstations of advanced users, at least until the interface can become more standardized and easy to use.
I am !amused.
They don't forecast the rise of the Amiga? What? Didn't they even attempt any research? :)
The big hardware players like IBM, HP and Compaq are likely tired of cow-towing to Bill & Co. every time they sell a machine. Linux means they can free themselves from any outside control in product development. It also levels the playing field for everyones hardware. Lastly, Linux is buying them mindshare from the people they need to support thier products - sysadmins, delvelopers and IT personnel in general - by introducing them to a *NIX variant, they get a toe-hold for thier proprietary versions of *NIX. No wonder they're all solidly behind Linux - it's good business.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Of course, the 2.4 kernel is due soon. But that was true last October, too. ;-)
new MS strategy. A way of looking at the
have given up their strategy of trying to convert heterogenous systems
over to MS only systems, and have attampted to go for peaceful
coexistence.
It's a dangerous strategy if OS X takes off, since now there is a
UNIX-like OS with a first rate desktop / GUI development environment.
According to the article BSD will cease to exist. Or at least remain completely unnoticed by journalists.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Linux shipped revenue in 2005 will approach 20 percent of the revenue of Unix and 17 percent of that of Windows.
This, of course, says nothing about the number of units shipped or the number of boxes with Linux installed, as the "shipped revenue" of Linux can be as low as the purchaser desires.
well-established OS environments that continue to benefit from the research and development resources of Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM,
As nearly as I can tell, Linux benefits from their research as well. The lag is a little higher, but the 'geek effect'* means that Linux benefits from any research that benefits any other operating system.
Much of the beneficial backlash Linux has gained at Windows NT's expense will dissipate by 2002, forcing the Linux community to refocus and re-energize its campaign for wide corporate acceptance.
Yup. Market growth of any non-MS OS must eventually slow, as only hardcore MS-ites will continue to buy MS products, and everyone who's convinced that MS is non-optimal has already stopped buying MS products.
Interesting article, but really only worthwhile from the point of view of business people and marketroids. Every business in the world could drop all support of Linux, and guess what?
It would still exist and grow and improve.
*geek effect: Geeks work in technical places. Geeks like Linux. Geeks learn new technical things in technical places. Geeks say "Hey, let's add this to Linux!"
This report says nothing about how Apple products will effect things. Don't forget, way back in 1979 Steve Jobs brought the personal computer to the mass market. Apple is about to release a modern graphical operation system with a true Unix core. My personal prediction is that Apple will steadily gain marketshare in three critical computing markets: small to medium scale data serving (webserving), home clients and business clients. I see Apple's (not Linux's) marketshare equaling Microsoft's by the year 2005, if not sooner.
Another thing they ignore is that computers are not only used for productive work. This was to be expected from Gartner, them being analysts, but still the fact remains that Windows is a better platform for games and will be, especially with the anticipated rise of technologies like the X-Box.
A final thing they ignore is that OS choice appears to be less deterministic than one thinks it should be - while a number of people know that non-MS platforms are better for some applications, they still use Windows, and Windows does have its advantages, some geeks would rather be hanged than use it and stick to sometimes less comfortable and/or less powerful solutions.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
I just wanted to point something out here. While I agree this does seem to be a good endorsement for Linux's role, I have to wonder about some of these conclusions. One in particular was interesting to me:
7. The performance advantages of RISC over Intel-based servers will decline by about 20 percent to 30 percent each year [..]
They mention nothing to back this up, and it just plain doesn't make sense to me. This kind of conclusion without any presentation of a reason behind if makes me take this whole report with a grain of salt.
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
What the Gartner Group doesn't understand about TCO (or at least fails to recognize in this report) is that the price of the OS license is only a tiny fraction of TCO. Here's what I think really matters in the calculation of TCO:
Primary documentation. Is the operating system well-documented? Are the manuals (or man pages) accurate, well-written, clear and concise? Linux doesn't score particularly well in the man page department, unfortunately--I think it loses points here. However...
Secondary documentation. How good is the secondary, user-contributed documentation out there relative to other operating systems? Are there well-written, current HOWTOs, user guides, tips and tricks, etc out there? If so, how well are they organized? Linux scores very high here. Other UNIXes are not so lucky. Windows has a lot of users out there--there are a lot of helpful tips on the Net but the documentation is not organized well.
Source code availability. It's an old adage that "the source code is the best documentation," and it's hard to argue otherwise. If I really want to know how a certain function call works, or how the kernel is talking to the hardware, I can dig out the glibc or kernel sources and see for myself, and be 100% certain of the accuracy of my conclusions (well, as long as my understanding of the code is correct). Once again, Linux and other free OSes score high here. With commercial UNIXes and Windows, you have to trust the documentation -- which is often not 100% accurate. In addition, if there's just a bug that needs to be fixed, it's often much easier to fix it yourself if you have access to the source code. Waiting for Microsoft or a commercial UNIX vendor to get a patch out to you can be painfully costly if your product or service's success is dependent on your software vendor's turnaround capability.
In summary, what I think really counts the most towards TCO is the relative understanding of the managers who plan system rollouts and the administrators who maintain them once they're out there. I've seen way too many Windows NT admins out there banging their heads on their desks because something doesn't work the way the documentation says it will, and they have no hope of getting it right because Tech Support doesn't know either. This leads to a lot of costly experimentation (labour is much more expensive than hardware) to make things work.
On the other hand, while Linux documentation isn't always perfect, it's plentiful, it's reasonably organized, and if you just can't find what you need from the HOWTOs or the man pages, you can always fall back on the source code.
Over the next five years, a large number of recent graduates who are in sysadmin positions will start to rise to positions of greater purchasing power in IS departments. Many of these people have grown up with Free operating systems.
Additionally, new recruits into corporate IS departments will also have had significant experience of Free operating systems at University.
Together, this means that a lot of the traditional barriers to Linux/*BSD in the server room will disappear.
Coupled with the increasing quality of desktop tools for X (Gnome, KDE, StarOffice, KOffice etc) this *may* cause a gradual acceptance of Linux etc. on the corporate desktop.
Happy days ahead.... - Mind you, I have been wrong before, and the Gartner Group are not exactly perfect.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
At one point during that time, they predicted that four Unixes would survive. I believe the winners were Solaris, HPUX, Digital Unix, and SCO. That's right; March 1998 or so and Linux was NOT EVEN MENTIONED AS A PLAYER, much less a survivor.
Now, they sprinkle notes like "0.7 probability" throughout their predictions, so they have an out, but one would rather they show more of their work.
--
Gartner's clients are CTOs and managers who quote Gartner reports in order to justify pet projects. It works like this:
1. Techies play with cool stuff.
2. The techies start whispering into the ears of their managers about the cool stuff they're playing with. The techies know not to challenge the status-quo too much or they'll be ignored, so the managers only really hear about moderately cool stuff.
3. Managers (many of whom are has-been techies) start to daydream about the cool stuff the techies have mentioned. Some if it sounds like it might be useful, but of course the big boss (CEO, CFO, etc.) will never go for it, oh well.
4. Gartners asks the managers and CTOs what they've been thinking about.
5. Gartner produces a report that reflects what the managers _would_like_to_do, but don't really have the guts for.
6. Managers buy Gartner reports and use them to justify their pet projects.
The conclusion: Gartner is really reporting techie opinions, filtered through a powerful "you can't handle the truth" lens and contaminated with strange manager ideas.
What will happen now is that all the managers who were dreaming of Windows installations will keep doing what they were doing. All the managers who were dreaming of Linux will have some ammo to justify jumping in with both feet.
If the techies in the organization like Linux, the Windows projects will fall strangely behind schedule while the Linux projects will go surprisingly well (it's amazing how happy techies make a project go better). In two years, shortly after the managers have noticed that their Windows projects are going nowhere, Gartner will report that Linux is suddenly the greatest thing since sliced bread.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I disagree. When I was at University (left 9 years ago) I wasn't aware of *any* free operating systems. Certainly none that were 'industrial strength'. Please let me know which OSs you are thinking about. (I did Maths, so YMMV)
We used SunOS on workstations, BBC Micros (I kid you not) and a chuffing great Control Data monster running something nasty (but it compiled and ran FORTRAN77, which was all we needed).
My point is (and this comes from experience of hiring people) that recent graduates in CS *all* run free operating systems out of choice. These operating systems are now totally capable of earning their food in the datacentre. I am *seeing* this pressure to adopt Linux/*BSD where I work.
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