Windows Bumps Unix as Top Server OS

Ivan writes " Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time, according to a new report from IDC. Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers, IDC analyst Matthew Eastwood said of the firm's latest Server Tracker market share report. "It's the first time Unix was not top overall since before the Tracker started in 1996.""

Comments

not necessarily

[lucas teh geek]

doesnt this really just suggest that windows servers need regular replacing to keep doing their job while old unix hardware keeps doing its job just fine?

Re:not necessarily

[Lee_in_KC]

"doesnt this really just suggest that windows servers need regular replacing to keep doing their job while old unix hardware keeps doing its job just fine?"

No.

If you are making a living in IT you know that you are still replacing servers as they roll off warranty and as they are fully depreciated. I'd no more put one of my Oracle databases on an old Linux machine than an old Windows machine. Requirements always go up, not down. Saying you can run Linux on older hardware is a misleading statement.

I suppose if a company is using Linux because it was free, or using UNIX of some form because it "runs on older hardware" they get what they deserve anyway - that's not the way to run an IT shop.

The change is likely due to the increase in blade-type systems which are well suited to a Windows environment. You can use a UNIX server environment and have interoperability with the end-users' desktop systems and the domain security model, but when you can just plug another cheap blade in and not have to worry about a third party authentication scheme, it makes Windows a pretty easy choice. Some of the arguments posted about not being able to run more than one app are not a shortcoming in the OS but rather a shortcoming in the developers. Plus, who cares if you need 5x$1000 blades to run 5 apps on Windows? It would cost more than $5000 to get the same sort of horsepower in a UNIX box.

Tools my friends, these are just tools. They don't know or care if you religiously defend them. Your IT careers will be more successful if you learn to use a variety of tools, each what is appropriate for the job.

Re:How long

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Windows servers just got more expensive, or Unix servers got less expensive. Perhaps a better study would talk about volume or usage -- or longevity. Perhaps Unix servers from 2002 simply lasted longer than Windows servers, so the companies using Unix didn't have to upgrade after 3 years.

Re:How long

[PhrostyMcByte]

There are two ways I see to look at this:

1. They say "$x billion worth" - I'd assume Windows servers are a little more expensive than *nix servers due to more licensing. The article doesn't touch on the actual number of servers sold. I've not had experience buying enterprise servers though...
2. With many educational facilities teaching .NET in the past few years, it makes sense to see a bump in servers which might host ASP.NET. That will only increase, and I bet we'll see even more Windows servers this year.

I guess the cause is probably somewhere in between.

IDC Server Study

[NutscrapeSucks]

It seems like this study gets published about every two weeks on Slashdot, and everyone has misconceptions about it.

The funny thing is that people's reactions are entirely based on the headline. If Slashdot runs the story as "Linux Server Revenue Up!", half the comments are about Microsoft going out of business or whatever. If they run the larger Windows numbers in the headline, everyone complains.

Anyway -- Here's a laundry list of objections that will no doubt appear:

+ This study doesn't count the servers I have running Gentoo/Debian/etc
-- Most of the revenue reported is actually hardware, so yes it does

+ How would they know what I'm running on my servers? I didn't get a preinstalled OS
-- User surveys, statistical methods, etc. It's not an exact count.

+ My *nix servers have 234 CPUs and run more applications than my Windows servers
-- Because the survey counts $$$ and not CPU or box counts, this sorta works itself out, but I guess this is valid.

+ We put Linux on our i486-33 Servers
-- Who cares? IDC doesn't, they're counting new server revenue.

Re:Microsoft's favourite trick...

[NutscrapeSucks]

Microsoft actually makes products designed for small businesses and storefront integration shops, whereas Linux distributors focus almost exclusively on the Enterprise Fortune 500 market. MS-SBS is pretty much a "install-and-go" type product for single-server environments, There's also tons of training and marketing support for the integrator.

I don't think there's any equivalent in the Linux world that doesn't require a lot of *nix talent for customization. (And the actual amount of *nix talent in the small biz market is practically zero.)

So, as long as the Linux world is so focused on Wall Street, it shouldn't be a suprise that Windows is outselling them on Main Street.

inevitable rise

[DeveloperAdvantage]

Microsoft's success on the server side was unavoidable for a number of reasons:

1. They dominate the desktop, which gives them excellent exposure to all the business leaders who actually make the decisions about what software to purchase.

2. Their products are reasonably stable (although individual applications sometimes crash, like Outlook, my desktop, Windows XP Pro, hasn't blue screened in a long time!). All the patches are quite inconvenient too.

3. They have a huge amount of money to put into their development tools and .NET platform. They can acquire alot of smart people who will do good work for them.

4. The huge increases in performance available on a simple "desktop" servers, say compared with 5 years ago, has enabled fairly complex applications to be run on them. (This is also helps linux grow). 5 years ago a person who would have suggested putting Oracle on windows would get laughed at, now at least if people laugh it is not as loud or as long.

5. Microsoft knows how to profit from software, whereas many of the unix companies counted on making profits from hardware. Not a good business to be in when cost keeps falling so drastically for a given level of performance.

It has taken them a long time to come this far, I think longer than most people anticipated, but now they have achieved a significant level of success.

Re:How long

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy servers for my company all the time. A proprietry Unix box costs between 6 and 60 times as much as the average Intel box. Whether the Intel box has Windows or Linux makes no difference - we pay for both, and it is an insignificant slice of the cost.

How many Windows boxes where replaced with Linux last year where I work? Answer: None. How many Unix systems where replaced with Linux? Answer: Hundreds.

This is why Windows/Linux eats into HP-UX/AIX/Solaris market share.

Neither

[millahtime]

The idea here is sales. This does not talk about usage, swithing, or anything else.

So, all of the free downloads and installs are not counted here. Windows had a lot of sales, unix lost some and Linux increased in sales. That's dollars and cents not usage.

With all of the free solaris downloads, linux downloads, and BSD downloads it's no suprise that unix purchases are going down. Why pay for it if you can get it free?

Re:How long

[slashdotnickname]

Perhaps a better study would talk about volume or usage -- or longevity.

Why would a market share report, whose audience is investors, want to report on that?

Sure, Unix boxes last longer... plenty of studies have established that... but these people are tracking sales figures.

No, this is the reason for the shift

[typical]

Look at the numbers. They are *dollar values*. They are not "number of installed servers this year". There's a reason for that.

You know whose lunch Linux has been eating? Solaris's. AIX's. HP/UX's.

You know how much a typical Solaris deployment with commercial servers would have cost? Right. $$$.

You know how much a typical *Linux* server costs? Right. In most cases, nothing. Sure, you can get Red Hat Enterprise and use a commercial Apache replacement and a commercial ssh, but that isn't what most Linux servers I'm aware of are running.

This has been making the dollar size of the market drop like a stone. That says nothing about amount of deployments. That just says that Sun and friends are bringing a lot less money home than they used to, and it's staying with the people who are using the servers.

"Windows Bumps Unix as Top Server OS"? Hardly. "Windows Bumps Unix as Most Expensive Server OS", perhaps.