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Windows Servers Neck and Neck with Unix Servers
BrainSurgeon writes "According to the Register, Windows based servers are now even with Unix based servers in terms of sales for the first time ever." From the article: "In an overall up server market, IDC counted $4.2bn worth of Microsoft Windows server sales on the back of 12 percent growth. Total Unix sales also hit $4.2bn in the period, IDC said, on 3 per cent revenue growth. Those totals left Microsoft and Unix systems holding 35 per cent of the server market each."
Who wants to bet that maybe Microsoft just charge more? :)
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That doesn't count towards how many servers are running linux/unix without having paid for it... in regards to how many servers are out there of each, you can't go by just the sales. I would say linux/unix probably outweighs windows in quantity of servers on the net.
You're nothing; like me.
I wonder if this will make UNIX vendors realize that unless they can get a consumer UNIX, like Linux, out there and viable, erosion is going to continue. Windows will continue to eat up the server space for as long as people need Exchange and Active Directory servers. We need to remove the need for Exchange and Active Directory servers.
Does this mean they took the value of the entire server market and calculated the share of Windows server from the size of the sales... (100/35)*4.2bn = $12bn total market? Doesn't this mean that the amount of Unix installs per server is still much bigger because Unix (if it includes *bsd) is cheaper?
Linux, *bsd.. and anything else that probably isnt purchased with the OS preinstalled.
How many of you get your servers with an OS installed on it? I surely dont. Then I install linux. And I buy a crapload of hardware.
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10 idiots want to buy a lemon for $10/each and 100 people buy a tasty pear for $1/each.
Is it just me or does it seem like there are still a hell of lot more pears out there...
Still, this leaves us with 20% unaccounted for. What percentage of these were sold w/o an OS, and how many of these will end up with Linux (OK, fine, or BSD) on them? What other Operating Systems are filling in the gaps?
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So in this case the sales increase is not necessarily based on the quality of the offering but on the convenience.
The report actually indicates that Windows Servers are gaining a smaller share of the server market INCREASE than they should, and Linux is gaining TWICE as much as it should if they were all actually gaining an equal share.
Also a number of idiot commentators are saying "Windows servers wipes the floor with Linux" when in fact the report shows that both Windows and Linux are wiping the floor with PROPRIETARY UNIX.
Yawn - big surprise. This has been a foregone conclusion of every analyst for the past two or three years - that Linux (and to a lesser degree Windows) will replace proprietary UNIX and then the battle will come down to Linux vrs Windows - which Linux will win handily.
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As is always the case...
The raw number of sales between Unix-based and Microsoft-based servers not being considered by the article. The dollar-value of sales is what they're looking at. In terms of dollar value, as much money was spent on Microsoft-based servers as on Unix-based servers, at $4.2bn
If you're going to talk about the real number of servers being implemented, you need to consider the fact that, in general, Microsoft-based solutions cost a whole lot more than Unix-based solutions.
Interestingly enough, $1.2bn was spent on Linux-based servers, and Linux-based servers accounted for the largest increase in sales.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
One of the reasons Microsoft is making such inroads into the server market is that they've really improved their operating system. Windows servers can be made reliable and secure if they're administered properly. Insofar as it brings choice to the marketplace, then having Windows as a realistic option for a server is a good thing.
But don't lose sight of what's at stake. The Microsoft business model is to leverage it's monopoly in one area to drive out competition in another. If Microsoft will let Windows coexist peacefully with it's neighbors, then great. If they're true to form, though, they'll introduce incompatabilities and do everything they can to make sure businesses don't have any more of a choice in their server OS than their desktop OS.
The struggle isn't just about running the cooler OS, or using the command line vs. a GUI. It's about freedom and choice.
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How much is that dollar amount offset due to the fact that you don't necessarily have to pay for Linux?
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I guess my home web server doesn't count in the statistics for server sales in the past year. I found the machine on the street, threw in a new hard drive from newegg, and it's running Debian GNU/Linux. I just did some work for a company that wanted me to get rid of their spam and also upgrade their website backend. The website backend project involved setting up mysql on an old server that they had laying around, and the spam filter is postfix+spamassassin+amavis+clamav running on Debian on an extra desktop workstation computer that they had at the office. I also set up a near-identical spam filtering machine using Debian on a workstation at a law firm recently. So, there you go, 4 new servers running Debian GNU/linux in the past year. It's interesting that these sales figures are dollar denominated. It marginalizes GNU/Linux as a server OS (because it's free as in beer or alternately relatively cheap if it comes with support) while also informing how valuable it is (because in the hands of the skilled, it gets the job done while costing nothing).
Linux usage is certainly up, the ROLE of the server needs to be discussed. I have 24 linux machines at one client's location, too bad most of them are just proxy servers running squid with an LAMP for configuring them. While all the chatter about Linux making progress into corporate IT the role of the machine needs to be involved in the discussion?
How many corporations have Linux-run PDCs? Email? File Respositories? Backup? All this talk about sales figures means little when you take out the role of the server out of the discussion. Without a breakdown along the Lines of X Windows 2003 Email Servers vs. Y Linux Email Servers the discussion really has little value besides a vague sales figure. The discussion of Linux, BSD, Windows, BEOS, Tiger, whatever is is lacking any real worth. Going on 11 years here soon and corporations are not cut and dry. What does this follow fact tell you (taken from one of my clients):
# of Linux Machines 3
# Of Windows 2003 Servers 24
# Of Windows 2000 Professional Machines 8
What do they use more? Windows? Not really. The 24 2003 Servers are used to simulate web traffic and other customized in-house traffic. Not one of those Windows servers is mission critical. The 8 2000 machines are the staff's workstations. The core critical machine that run's their entire manufacturing system is a linux machine. 1 Linux email server, and 1 linux firewall. Now looking at that figure you couldn't determine how important any of those servers are, we need more data in these discussions, it's incomplete.
Purchasing numbers mean little. Even across a broad scope there is no direct correlation between number of copies of X and their level of importance in a company, if you think that probaility shows that given there are 2 milion copies of A and only 1 million copies B that A is used more in mission critical services I would recomend you avoid gambling. The Christian Bible is in over 50% of homes yet less then 10% of people can repeat the opening of Genesis. ("In the Beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" I believe.)
I'll summarize with a classic Ken-ism:
OWNERSHIP OF SOMETHING DOES NOT GARUNTEE THE UTILIZATION OF SOMETHING.
Take a typical computer, slap some SNMP on it and grab CACTI and monitor the staff in a building. I bet you the average work-hour utilization of the processors will never exceed 50%. 10 years is hasn't. Just because you have a 3.4 GHz processor doesn't mean you'll use all that CPU power.
For you drivers out there your speedometer can post 125 MPH... doesn't mean your gonna ever go that fast right?
--END RANT + LUV--
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Be on the lookout for web services that are up for a few days, get /.'ed, and go poof. You can thank Gates for that.
No, you can thank poor administration and low bandwidth for that. Default Apache isn't going to stand up to a Slashdotting more than IIS. Would I run IIS? No. But that's besides the point.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
SQL Server, lots of them. A good, fast (check the TPCC ratings) and reliable database with lots of features. OLAP cubes. Applications servers. Scalable n-tier applications architectures. SAP. Peoplesoft. Siebel. File and print services. SOE roaming profiles. Business Objects. Reconciliation systems. Document archiving and control systems for whole governments. Entire financial systems infrastructures. Enterprise messaging and groupware, all flavours. Enterprise directories. Risk management systems. Workflow and document routing engines. EIA busses. HR systems. Project management systems. Name it, it probably runs on a Windows server just as effectively as it does on Unix servers. In the name of the immortal John Von Neumann, I command you to Grow Up!
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Now there's a bad start.
Notice the important point of this story beyond the fact that purchased Windows servers were exchanged for Linux:
Everybody involved (except the one Microsoft-based consultancy) KNEW that Linux had better stability and maintainability than Windows! Why? Because they've been there and done that with Windows and Linux!
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But those are all real world applications.
I think what he meant was "none of my friends use Windows to run their at-home MP3 Server/Firewall/DIVX FTP server."
No reason to lie.
Yeh, but Linux sales?! I'm sure Sun, SGI, IBM, HP et al Unices are all payed up, but how many Linux servers were bought and payed for? I'm having trouble thinking of any that weren't downloaded distros and either built from parts or converted Windows boxes.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
"OLAP cubes. Applications servers. Scalable n-tier applications architectures. SAP. Peoplesoft. Siebel. File and print services. SOE roaming profiles. Business Objects. Reconciliation systems. Document archiving and control systems for whole governments. Entire financial systems infrastructures. Enterprise messaging and groupware, all flavours. Enterprise directories. Risk management systems. Workflow and document routing engines. EIA busses. HR systems. Project management systems."
That's the biggest list of buzzword-bullshit I've ever seen. So often it's a case of "I NEED that!.... I think....wait, what is it?"
Exactly, those are the type of people who run Windows servers. Their customers scream "I need buzzwords X, Y, and Z implemented yesterday!"
.. I say: "No problem. Here's a good server, a good UPS, FreeBSD, and qmail. See you again in about a year."
My customers say "I need a reliable mail server."
I manage about 20 FreeBSD qmail servers scattered throughout the USA. They have no other open ports except SSH which is firewalled and keys-only. I have not updated any part of any of them in a year and they all still work.
I don't doubt that it's *possible* to do this with Windows, but I really hope I'm never asked to try.
Perhaps what he meant was "I work at a company with a real IT department and have never seen windows used in a critical role."
Which wouldn't be so surprising. Most "real" IT departments are filled with people who know one thing and know it reasonably well enough to confuse the suits. They also spend all of their time denegrating anything that isn't "their thing". Well, that and they have a declining population of Unix admins, a growing population of Windows admins, and a growing number of users glad the stuff "just works" now.
Real world apps dont take 5 updates per release to become stable. Real world apps dont have more holes than swiss cheese.
Which leads to the question then of "why run Unix?" But, of course, you weren't talking about Unix, which is the thing you know. Having worked with both Unix and Windows relatively equally over the last 15 years, I'd say your statement is true of Windows 10 years ago, but not today. However, it's more equally true of Unix today, than 10 years ago. All of the major vendors push updates so frequently now, I can't comprehend how anyone could be so blind to it. I'd say, on average, we push updates to our servers about once every four weeks, maybe six. We check the update, see if it's going to fix something that's broken. If not, it'll wait. As for security fixes, well...on a properly secured Windows box, they aren't as necessary as the Unix crowd would have you believe. And, yes, it's relatively easy to secure a Windows box....just do what you'd do on a Unix box. If you lock it down, a good 95% of the security patches don't apply. OTOH, the amount of patches to a Unix box these days just makes me cringe.
Let me tell you a funny story about a company running a Java based CRM app on IIS. This company had roughly 5k users for this app and were having ungodly amounts of crashes and slow connect times. You know what the vendors solution was: Use Solaris or Linux.
Let me tell you a funny story about a system we just replaced. It had been running on Solaris, and on a good day, when the machine was running which was relatively rare, we could get 300 simulataneous users. Not a typo, only 300 users. We switched the app server over to Windows/IIS on relatively comparable hardware and now we can accomodate approximately 5000 users. That's the thing about anecdotes, for every one you have, someone has one that's exactly the opposite.
When dealing with a Unix platform the need to upgrade is much less since the majority of the needed items are rolled into almost all prior versions and you generally wont have some crap-ass "built for XP" compatibility issues.
This is probably the most interesting statement you made, as it's so untrue. I've rarely seen a Windows 3.1 program that won't work on XP, but don't try running something that's 11 years old on a "modern" Unix variant. Binary compatibility issues alone would make your statement false. The "Built for XP" crap is just marketing. It's got more to do with the fact that "all of the drivers for the hardware used in this machine are native to the XP CD. You only need to go to the website to get updated drivers." Nothing more. Sure, you'll find the odd program here and there that won't work, but see my prior statements on anecdotal evidence.
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I would say, SQL Server is one of the few remaining reasons why Windows might be a better bet in some circumstances. It's really a fairly impressive database product. I suppose its closest competition on the Unix side is, well, Oracle, or PostgreSQL, but then you aren't even touching the Analysis Services datacube technology, which is fairly amazing and seems to have no peer in that industry.
Remember, these numbers are based on dollars, not number of servers. Almost all of the servers you're talking about, being sold without an operating system so Linux can be installed later, are going to be way down the line in terms of cost (and cost is both cause and effect there). The number of Linux servers is going to be significantly higher than the 10% figure given in the article. They're also probably much more efficient with their dollars, able to accomplish more for the same number of dollars (e.g. ten $1,000 Linux-based servers may be able to do a lot more than one $100,000 name-brand Unix or Windows server "solution", and for the same amount in support costs, you probably get about the same amount of service.