IDC's only products are information, analysis of that information, and opinions about what it all means. These things are delivered in many ways - reports, telebriefings, presentaitons, strategic consulting, etc. are all things IDC offers.
I did my best to answer the thoughtful questions posed by the Slashdot community without also making it impossible to sell the results of our research.
The answer is pretty simple. If someone paid for the software as a packaged product or paid to download the software, it is paid software. If the person didn't pay for the software, it isn't paid software.
Your statements about IDC are simply not true. While many IDC subscribers are hardware and software suppliers, IDC's bulletins and reports are based upon research conducted by IDC analysts. IDC, by the way, has end user and government subscribers as well.
Public company revenues are reported quarterly. IDC's software research group takes that public information and segments it into over 90 different software categories. IDC then seeks verification of this segmentation from the company in question.
Software shipments are modeled based upon the revenues in each of the 90+ software markets using average shipment values determined through demand-side research. As before, IDC seeks verification from the vendors in question.
You'll note that who subscribes to what service is not included in the research.
As one of the authors of the report, I'd like to thank you for making the point that when 13.5% of the respondents of a study say that they have Linux installed that this has absolutely no relationship to 13.5% share of the market.
I also agree with a point made earlier that many of the respondents in the first adoption study were likely to have had Linux in their environment but didn't know it. The respondents to both studies were decision-makers for information technologies in their organization. These folks may not have known what individuals in their organizations were using. They did know, on the other hand, what they were responsble for selecting.
Dan Kusnetzky, program director for operating environments and serverware research services
Slashdot Mirror
IDC's only products are information, analysis of that information, and opinions about what it all means. These things are delivered in many ways - reports, telebriefings, presentaitons, strategic consulting, etc. are all things IDC offers.
I did my best to answer the thoughtful questions posed by the Slashdot community without also making it impossible to sell the results of our research.
The answer is pretty simple. If someone paid for the software as a packaged product or paid to download the software, it is paid software. If the person didn't pay for the software, it isn't paid software.
Your statements about IDC are simply not true. While many IDC subscribers are hardware and software suppliers, IDC's bulletins and reports are based upon research conducted by IDC analysts. IDC, by the way, has end user and government subscribers as well.
Public company revenues are reported quarterly. IDC's software research group takes that public information and segments it into over 90 different software categories. IDC then seeks verification of this segmentation from the company in question.
Software shipments are modeled based upon the revenues in each of the 90+ software markets using average shipment values determined through demand-side research. As before, IDC seeks verification from the vendors in question.
You'll note that who subscribes to what service is not included in the research.
As one of the authors of the report, I'd like to thank you for making the point that when 13.5% of the respondents of a study say that they have Linux installed that this has absolutely no relationship to 13.5% share of the market.
I also agree with a point made earlier that many of the respondents in the first adoption study were likely to have had Linux in their environment but didn't know it. The respondents to both studies were decision-makers for information technologies in their organization. These folks may not have known what individuals in their organizations were using. They did know, on the other hand, what they were responsble for selecting.
Dan Kusnetzky, program director for operating environments and serverware research services