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Windows Bumps Unix as Top Server OS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the zomg-they-totally-hax dept.

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.""

4 of 514 comments (clear)

  1. not necessarily by lucas+teh+geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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    TIAEAE!
  2. Re:How long by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:How long by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. No, this is the reason for the shift by typical · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.