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."

Comments

No Amiga forecast.....

[blogan]

They don't forecast the rise of the Amiga? What? Didn't they even attempt any research? :)

Stands to reason.

[Soko]

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.

Some background reading

[update()]

Check out Gartner's previous pronouncements on this subject. In particular, read Gartner Slams Linux from just over a year ago. I wish they'd explain what new development has caused them to upgrade Linux's prospects from hopeless to unstoppable. XFree86 4? TuxRacer? Gnome Foundation press releases?

Of course, the 2.4 kernel is due soon. But that was true last October, too. ;-)

No mention of .NET

[Chalst]

The findings seem plausible to me, but they declined to comment on the
new MS strategy. A way of looking at the .NET roll-out is that MS
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.

hmmm

[the_other_one]

According to the article BSD will cease to exist. Or at least remain completely unnoticed by journalists.

Some thoughts...

[dillon_rinker]

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!"

What about Apple?

[fragermk]

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.

How do they back up these claims?

[molo]

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.

Gartner's crystal ball is useless

[Tony Shepps]

I had access to their research in early 1998 when I worked at a big-5 consulting company. Even in that time frame, Linux was not on their radar screen. Anyone who has access to their archives, please feel free to do searches on Linux for March 1998 and earlier. I'll wager you won't find anything more serious than a casual mention.

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 is full of it...

[Ami Ganguli]

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.