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A Look at Windows Server Outselling Linux
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."
Gartner, Inc. recently reported:
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.
Enough said. Nothing to see here. Move along...
I've recently redone the server end for [yet another] office (Linux based, of course) for which they certainly won't show up in Linux or Windows based sales "reports". Ever.
Linux is doing just fine...
Plus, you have hassle free and rapid support from Microsoft, which is a comforting feature for corporate customers
Hassle-free? Rapid? Man I gotta get whatever these guys are smoking....
Every try to report a bug in a Microsoft product and get a fix? You'll likely be waiting on the order of months. That is, if you get a fix at all.
It's very easy to sell more than nothing. You only need to sell it once!!!
Plus, you have hassle free and rapid support from Microsoft, which is a comforting feature for corporate customers.
.Net is a selling point. For what, I'm not sure. After having the .Net framework trash my home box, I'm quite hesitant to install it on my servers.
*ROFL* Wow, that's rich. What microsoft offers is not "hassle free" or "rapid support", but the illusion of such. If Red Hat, etc, could do that, they'd own.
In the past several months, my company has had to deal with Microsoft on 2 different calls. One was about Clusters, the other was MSMQ. Both were handled poorly - the first one, their answer was "apply this hotfix", they think it'll fix it, no promises, and no easy way to back it out (that they knew of). Niiice.
The second, I'm firmly convinced that our guys know more than the people who wrote the code - we've had to deal with some odd issues, and none of the tech support had a clue(and yes it was escalated a few times). Or a grasp of the primary language in the US. *grr*
And
People don't buy servers with Linux preinstalled. They buy a no OS server and install it themselves. Plus Linux is free, which also skews the numbers a bit.
... that whenever a company buys a bunch of servers from say, Dell, and doesn't bother to specify on the order that some are Linux servers (since it doesn't save you any money for the hassle of making two orders, especially if you are using Debian or some non-supported distro anyway), they get counted towards *Windows* profits, even though they will be wiped as soon as they get to the company.
Because, y'know, without clarification, I might think someone didn't know what someone was saying.
I am fairly certain they knew what they were doing as they were trying to add to the continued confusion of Linux server "sales".
Microsoft wants everyone to believe that their TCO is lower than Linux when everyone knows it's not. By funding/writing misleading press releases, they can further blur (in the general public's mind) the lines that don't exist.
Not all development teams are created equal. I led a small development team that developed a C#/.NET application to automate Technical Support and QA internal operations. The project was largely successful. We had 1 contact with Microsoft ( due to my team's lack of experience in automating remote Hostname changes). In just 3 days, Microsoft provided us with the code answers we were missing. Our first release was bugfree and, in the first year, the departments experienced an 800% ROI.
.NET is a framework. I'm sure there are products and implementations that .NET is not suited for. Part of being a professional in this industry is understanding which tools to use for the job at hand.
That being said,
And just who is this "Linux" company which Microsoft seems to be competing so well against?
The thing I know of called "Linux" is a free operating system (which behaves a lot like UNIX), sold by dozens of different companies as a server environment, and also available for free. If there's some company out there called "Linux" who is just selling to the IT server market, it is no wonder MS is outselling them, as they must be very obscure.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
First off, they admit that they don't know what the UNITS are, just the revenue (and they admit that Windows costs more than Linux).
THEN they go off about WHY Microsoft moves more units than Linux, even though they admit that they don't know that Microsoft DID move more units.
You'd think that "cooltechzone" might be a bit suspicious that units are not mentioned. Just a bit suspicious.
microsoft take on any threat to their software in one (or a mixture of) ways:
1. buy out the competition
2. use dominance in another market to push your product in this one
3. when that doesn't work simply tell people lies
so far i haven't seen much of:
4. improve your own product so that the customers like it more and pay for it
microsoft thwart the market system, anti monopoly laws and consumer soverignty yet again....
Yup, that's purely the truth and it's purely FUD. In other news, Linux servers are outdownloading Microsoft servers.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
Windows server software is outselling Linux because linus isn't usually sold but rather downloaded and installed. Alot of corporate admins typically buy servers without the O/S and install it themself. This report is totally bogus and misleading if you ask me!
Certainly, in some cases, the TCO of Linux in a certain role at a certain location will be more than the TCO of a Windows server (or group of servers) serving the same rule. I'm not saying that this is always the case, or even that it's usually the case, but at least some of the time, this will be true.
Is it just me, or did Microsoft pretty much `invent' the TCO term strictly to counter free software like Linux? Did the term exist before Linux did, or was it just Microsoft making it popular?
In any event, I'm not here to argue that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux. I'm just saying that it's not as `obviously' wrong as you make it sound.
FUD articles like this usually ignore the fact that java exists. Java does exist and .NET is just a ripoff of it. Java has a better ide then .net (yes eclipse, netbeans and idea are all better the VS), has a richer library, integrates fantastically with the OS (syslog etc), has a much more robust and active community and costs nothing to use.
Look at what happened with VS.NET 2005. After years of being half as productive as eclipse users MS finally gave them a decent build sytem, a unit testing framework, and something like javadoc. Needless to say they blatantly ripped off ant and junit all the while making their product incompatible of course. Somehow they forgot about ripping off hibernate and xdoclet though which I found odd.
Anyway after two years of working with primitive tools which didn't have any refactoring support or half the shit java developers have been taking for granted they now have a product which is 80% as good as eclipse. FOr the next two years eclipse will continue to pull ahead and the VS.NET people will not know any better because they finally got a few new features in VS and are soooooo happy and proud.
evil is as evil does
Indeed, but insisting on quoting figures for Linux server "sales" indicates only a deliberate intent to mislead, since the majority of Linux servers out there are running on distros downloaded free of charge. Yes, I do know about RedHat Enterprise stuff, but I don't know anybody who uses it...
How many commercial servers are based on "sold distributions." We have more than a dozen sites with Linux servers running Debian, which were not bought from anywhere and thus basically untraceable as a purchase. We have a few windows servers as well, which we pay for license for.
Therefore, you could easily say we've bought more windows servers than linux, even though it's probably greater than a 10-1 ratio of actual use.
I once asked a CIO
Well, there's your problem, you asked an overblown geek something about financials and he either didn't know, or didn't care.
If you'd asked a CFO, then you would have gotten a very different picture, and I think you'd still be discussing the relative merits of drawn-down software licencing as a cost structure opposed to the tax-claimable options of the licences as software rental models amortized over the standard 3 year tax redemption period.
Go see your accounts depeartment, they'll tell you, to the penny, what you spent on software licences, renewals and maintenance agreements over anything up to 7 years ago.