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Netcraft Says IIS Gaining on Apache
benjymouse quotes this month's netcraft survey "In the August 2007 survey we received responses from 127,961,479 sites, an increase of 2.3 million sites from last month. Microsoft continues to increase its web server market share, adding 2.6 million sites this month as Apache loses 991K hostnames. As a result, Windows improves its market share by 1.4% to 34.2%, while Apache slips by 1.7% to 48.4%. Microsoft's recent gains raise the prospect that Windows may soon challenge Apache's leadership position."
People (I.T. guys included) will almost always go with what they are comfortable with. IIS is very easy to configure and you could have a Windows Server up and running in no time. With Apache, it's not so simple. Modifying text files gives the admins great control over nearly everything; but it's not so simple. And some n00b admin couldn't exactly master Apache in a weekend like they could IIS.
I personally use Apache on my servers. But I could also take my good old time configuring them because I'm not planning on making any money from them.
The game.
Namely a little bit of boredom in the web world plus the difficulty of trying to find new and interesting sites now that folks have figured out how to manipulate Google rankings.
Plus the fact that you can now run many more LAMP web sites per server than was previously possible. I mean, figure it out -- how many virtual sites can a person run on a modern fully configured Apache server than they could in say, 1999 before the dot com bubble burst. CPUs cores are something like 4-5x more powerful if not more, hard disk arrays bigger and faster, and the configuration setups probably ten times better. So it takes less Apache servers to run more sites, yes?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Since it's not installed out of the box on XP, Win2k3 or Vista, its then someone installing it because they want to.
Someone installing IIS on their home computer is more than likely aware of Apache and didn't install it for whatever reason.
Maybe the decline in Apache is due to the leaps IIS has taken in both reliablity (4 of the top 10 hosts with the best reliablity are running W2k3), supportability, expandiblity and security. Not to mention OOTB it can do a lot more than Apache does OOTB.
Many legitimate hosting sites use a handful of IPs for hundreds or thousands of sites. Counting by IP isn't valid.
Having used both extensively over the past 10 years, IMHO 90% of the config tasks are easier with IIS for a non-expert, but
5% are MUCH harder, and the remaining 5% you just can't do at all. Period. It's that 5% that makes IIS a non-option for me personally. For some of the sites we host, either server would work fine, but in those cases, there is no reason to pay a license fee for IIS.
One of the other benefits of having worked with both apache and IIS is that that 90% of what is normally easier in IIS really isn't if you develop internal tools to do that work for apache. In fact, a single web page with just a few fields on it runs a script that sets up DNS, apache, firewall, database, chroot jail, and optionally even an entire virtual machine, fully configured and running.
It's just "by default" those scripts are not included with Apache like they are with IIS.
Also, once you learn the Apache syntax and understand how things work, it turns out that using an editor isn't any harder than the IIS GUI. In fact, it's usually MUCH easier/faster for anything repetitive.
Not surprising because we are moving away from "hobbies" to "packages."
By hobbies I mean how many new dot coms are being created? How many people are creating new and nifty content? Some sure, but the vast majority of folks are companies that see the web as a necessity and not a money maker.
The innovative companies need flexibility, power and tunability, which is given by Apache, and the LAMP stack. The corporations that see the web as a necessity just want to put information onto the Internet. They don't care about "social networks." They just care that their catalog can be viewed. And that is the domain of Microsoft, not Apache.
I personally see these statistics as a maturation of the web, not that Apache is loosing market share.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I believe that netcraft is counting sites, not servers. As such, consolidating servers would not explain netcraft's numbers.
*sigh* back to work...
A "n00b admin" isn't going to be able to master anything in a weekend. They might figure out how to set something up & get it working but mastery is a long ways off.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Does it matter anymore? The point was made years ago. Apache's triumph on the web was touted during a time when we were trying to make a point that open source software was legitimate for large scale use in the real world. Everyone knows that now. In fact, open source has conclusively, and probably forever, denied Microsoft a monopoly in the server market. If they are making gains now (and yes, their biggest gains are most certainly in parking sites, to whom they probably pay megabucks for no other purpose than to skew the Netcraft survey) it isn't really relevant.
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Have you ever used .NET? That's why.
.NET, all of our developers have become much much more effective. The defect rates of our new C# code compared to our old C++ code are microscopic. We've converted our Apache based SOAP server to ASP.NET's XML WebServices and found that the development is faster, the code is cleaner, and again the defect rate is down. Our web development is currently in PHP, but we've found that if our web developers write C# / ASP.NET, our systems developers can help out with quality control, supplying code samples and advice, and even directly coding for the web. We're in the process of planning the ASP.NET version of our web applications.
.NET is a great platform for the rapid development of low defect applications. If you don't develop on Windows, give Mono a shot. I consider their successful efforts to be amazing.
.NET and we want to stay on the .NET train (advancements in IIS7 are going to be very useful to us) using IIS6 as our webserver is a no-brainer.
Since we've converted our systems and middleware development to C#
The simple fact is, whether you like Microsoft or not,
For our purposes, the fact that we use
Apache certainly works, but the question for us is, why use Apache? What is so compelling about Apache that would make us want to give up IIS6? We've used Apache for years and continue to do so to this day, but it isn't doing anything special for us except hosting PHP scripts (the performance of which, even with an accelerator, could be better).
Let us venture into Twitter's brain to see the thought process behind this post:
"What? Evidence that Linux lost marketshare in something? UNPOSSIBLE! Looks like I'll have to make something up as usual!"
Are you that insecure in the software you use that you have to see any minor percentage point change in something as either the end of Microsoft or anti-Linux FUD?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I'm surprised you aren't modded higher, frankly. This is the primary reasons open source isn't doing well. People stay with what they are comfortable with. MS Office in high school => MS office in college => MS office in the workplace. Windows in high school => Windows in college => Windows in the workplace. Geeks are constantly in denial about these things because they are always working to make things better, faster, and more efficient. But "People", generally speaking, go with what's comfortable, easy, and common. Drop down menus, radio boxes, etc are "common". Command line? Editting Text files? Apache better get out of the whole in a hurry. The server market is no longer a market where you can afford to be different. It's a commodity market, they are a dime a dozen, and if I can click a radio box as opposed to editing a text file - guess which I'm going to do?
No but if one guy has two IP addresses pointing at his IIS server and the other one only one IP pointing at his Apache server, the server count would be IIS : Apache, 2:1 while the physical server count would still be 1 : 1. This can't be even acceptable as a means for counting Apache installations.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Going to karma hell for this but, tell me, is paying someone (if they did) better or worse than Bruce Perens faking host headers in order to boast Apache ratings? Or is that even sillier than your assertion that MS sneaked IIS back on by default? (which of course wouldn't make a big dent anyway as more Windows boxes are behind firewalls than in front, and those ones already exposed on port 80 are probably doing it on purpose).
As the Perens stunt shows netcraft may not just be relying on host headers at all as you seem to think.
I kinda must agree there. I've always been an Apache guy. We use it on lots and lots of servers here, and it's never been that bad to setup. Recently though, we bought an app whose web component is ASP.NET based and needs to run on IIS. While it hasn't gotten me to switch off of Apache on my other boxes, I must say that the configuration utilities and flexibility (not degree but ease with which you can exercise it) was certainly a welcome thing. While I'm sure that Apache can probably do more when fine tuned, if IIS can do 80% of what Apache does with 20% of the effort, it's gonna win some converts.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Jeez. Anything other than praise, including questions, is now dismissed as bashing. No wonder MS is regarded as a cult.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
MS is good at this game of incrementally taking market share away from competitors. They have been doing it for years. They will match features, add luxuries, push it hard to business types, give it away, offer automated conversion ... whatever they think it takes.
.NET, Office, etc, all the stuff that millions of developers are already familiar with.
Nobody thought Office could replace WordStar, but MS beavered away at it, adding new features people liked and matching existing features, and now it's a distant memory. Same for Excel. The first versions of windows were jokes, but MS kept working on them and took the desktop over. Nobody used Windows as a server at first, but MS built NT and improved it and now they run the majority of small businesses and many larger ones. They had nothing in the database server market, but they bought SQL Server from Sybase and beavered away at it, and now they run a decent percentage of websites and many businesses. They were late to "the internet" but turned things round, built a browser that was the best for a while (IE5), and a web server that is now a serious contender.
Meanwhile Linux gains at the expense of Unix, and Linux geeks sit complacently back thinking they cannot be assailed. In reality the same forces that MS brough to bear on the desktop apply here: ignorance of alternatives, familiarity, PHBs, marketing, training, and, for the most part, the ability to do a decent job. Add to that the ability to easily integrate existing desktop/small business stuff, like connecting to COM objects, SQL server,
It makes me nervous to think that Microsoft could take the server off Unix/Linux as well. I don't think it's as far off as some might think. They are learning from Linux/Unix, in that their newer stuff is taking things like "xcopy deployment" and XML for ocnfig quite seriously.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
LA LA LA LA LA I AM NOT LISTENING.
.NET is easier and faster then PHP is for a lot of jobs. Installations doesn't require modifying text files.... Sure apache has its plusses and many of them are substantial. But this Excuses and ignoring the facts will only lead to your own disaster. Much like how mainframes died (or at least greatly diminished) over a decade ago. Sure Mainframes are faster and better then PC components but that is not what the people want. Open Source and Apache is doing the same thing, it is putting in stuff that they think they want not the bulk of their users. People want a GUI configuration tool, People want it to be defaultly built in with a full featured server side language. People don't want to compile their installation with a bunch of of cryptic commands for features they do or do not know what it does. People want GUI Application Development software so what they program will go onto the server. Apache and the OSS Community is doing a poor job in offering such services to the people. So in the spirit of freedom that the OSS Community as given them they feel free to use IIS because it gives them what they need. Most people do not have the time or the will to program these changes, most people only like Open Source Applications because it is free IIS comes already with Windows Server so it is fee enough for them. Don't be stupid and make excuses while more and more market-share slips away go an actively improve your product to help keep the market share you have and perhaps influence others to go back to IIS.
Wake up people! IIS Lately is just as secure as Apache, Development with
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Some nOOb could think they have mastered IIS in a weekend. Because they could get a web site up and running. That's really part of the problem. People setting up Web Servers not knowing what they are doing.
It's akin to people thinking they are CEO material, just because they can make a power point presentation.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
You can do the same type of thing mid-request stream with .Net and there are a number of ISAPI filters that do similar things (ISAPI_REWRITE comes to mind) if you don't want to use .Net. Finally, it's easy enough to code your own ISAPI filter to do the job just fine. In fact, if you're not a half bad coder you can develop something lighter than mod_rewrite because it does just what you need and no more.
Lastly, what I find almost funny is that most LAMP devs assume because a site is hosted on IIS that MSSQL is the backend. I've worked on a lot of IIS/.Net sites and about half are MSSQL and other half are MySQL. Each has its advantages and a smart development house will decide based on what it needs its RDBMS to do - not based on some software ethics.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
MS is - and always has been - an engineering shop. They never invented anything, and they don't do good design, either. What they're good at is the same thing the chinese are good at: Copy stuff from elsewhere and manufacture more of it cheaper. They're also really good at marketing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You have provided a good link for different countries, yet did not follow up. For example, all domains are at,
/ index.html (20% ISS, 73% Apache)
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200706
now, if we go by countries we see immediately who is responsible for the boat of ISS, (see website above for source)
Germany: 5% ISS, 92% Apache
US: 21% ISS, 74% Apache
Canada: 25% ISS, 70% Apache
India: 33% ISS, 63% Apache
China: 67% ISS, 28% Apache
Now, since China is adding more net users on the web faster than any other country, we see the problem. China is skewing Netcraft.