The Financial Express reports that, for the first time, sales of servers running Windows matched the revenues of Unix servers: Revenue for Windows servers grew 12.3 per cent to $4.2 billion in the quarter while unit shipments grew 10.7 per cent. Unix servers saw 2.8 per cent revenue growth to $4.2 billion while unit shipments increased 5 per cent. HP made gains on leader IBM, Dell posted huge growth, and Linux made up an ever larger share. It appears that both Windows and Linux continue to chip away at proprietary Unix from both ends.
Wow that rather interesting.
I’m not particularly interested in revenue for Windows or Linux servers – I want to see how many are actually out there. If it really is a tie based on revenue then Linux is kicking Windows’ rear.
The title is rather confusing, as it pitches Unix and Windows together but talks about Linux and Windows chipping away at Unix.
that is pretty much bad news for microsoft….
I mean, how many previous survey, some even sponsored by microsoft themselves, that said that UNIX servers was on the decline.
The previous surveys all said that Linux and FreeBSD growth was at the expense of UNIX
Therefore, logically it follows, that UNIX is on the decline, and now Windows is at the same level as the depleted UNIX.
BAD NEWS
Doesn’t paint the whole picture. Since Solaris 10 is now free, it will no longer be included in the revenue figures that this report talks about. Even if you buy support contracts, that doesn’t count towards OS sales.
“Unix revenue grows” “windows and linux chipping away at Unix”
Did it grow or lose? Make up your mind
.
I think the source of the confusion is that Linux ends up bringing in less revenue in both software and hardware than proprietary Unix, so even if Linux is growing at the expense of Unix, the reveneus of the aggregate are going to decline.
Now if you’re looking at it as a horse race, then it looks like Unix is in decline. But if you’re looking at it in another way, the real test is not how much revenue these servers are bringing in for the vendors, but how much utility per dollar they’re bringing to the companies that buy them. That’s a lot harder to measure.
Computers have traditionally been expensive, but get cheaper every year. And as they get cheaper, they provide more benefit in more places, and the economy grows overall. So I’d like to see server hardware and software sales plummet. Sure, increased competition and a smaller piece of the pie would see some of the established vendors suffer, but the IT industry overall would benefit, in my opinion, if more powerful software and hardware were available more cheaply.
Is it so difficult?
. Figures are for servers. That means machines with an OS. Whether the OS per se if free or not doesn’t bear.
. The total revenue of Windows servers started from zero, has been growing faster than that of Unix servers, and is now equal. Presumably it will surpass it beginnign next year.
. Unix in this context probably means AT&T licensed UNIX, so AIX, HPUX, Tru64, Solaris (is Unixware still sold?)
. Linux servers revenue is about a third that of Windows.
. Unix in this context probably means AT&T licensed UNIX, so AIX, HPUX, Tru64, Solaris (is Unixware still sold?)
I’m assuming something like IRIX is not counted as a server.
Article is more towards quantity, people buy fakes more than the original. Just because the Unix market share is declning doesn’t make it a draw. The Unix server provide more stability no question about that, comparing Solaris, AIX to Linux or Microsoft Server OS is itself a blasphemy
Revenue for Windows servers grew 12.3 per cent
Sales of servers that use the freely available Linux operating system surged 35.2 per cent
Linux is already at 10.3% of total server revenue. This does not sound like particularly good news for MS.
IBM’s position is particularly rosy being the no1 overall and no2 in the growing Linux market.
This is the same faulty method the is used to depict PC vs Mac growth.
Unix systems purchased 3,4,5 years ago are still doing the same jobs they were purchased to perform.
PC servers are being purchased today to replace the obsolete PC server bought last year or so.
Totally false volume.
RJ
While most of you are finding reasons to make Microsoft look bad as usual, I think it’s a pretty good news for them.
Don’t deny the truth zealots, since the release of Windows 2000, Microsoft made an important step forward in the server field. And with the release of Windows 2003 and all the .NET technologies, they made another big step forward.
The truth is, most of the people are defending Linux more than ever right now. Yes, Linux is more important than ever in the server field as well, but that’s only because proprietary Unix is slowly dying and because it’s hard to get Windows running on existing *nix hardware.
But if you put both platform on a common denominator, the fact is that Microsoft is gaining users over Linux since year 2000. Most of the people that are using Linux right now switched to it around 1998-1999. That was Linux golden years.
Now everything seems stable compared to 5 years ago. Microsoft is just slowly gaining more users… just like Apple… Why? Microsoft came up with some new interesting technologies (ie: .NET) and Apple is slowly converting alot of Linux users mostly because it offers a real good GUI alternative to Windows, something Linux isn’t able to offer.
Unix systems purchased 3,4,5 years ago are still doing the same jobs they were purchased to perform.
PC servers are being purchased today to replace the obsolete PC server bought last year or so.
Totally false volume.
Fellow, the article is about *revenue*. Whether I spend $5k to get one server more or $5k to replace an aging server, I spend $5k. There’s no ‘falsehood’ involved.
Windows Server 2000 and 2003 work great and the TCO of Linux and other unixes isn’t great. OpenSolaris with its enterprise features might make a comeback.
Windows, the first time in history in the server market, makes as much money as Unix and this is bad news for Microsoft? I would hate to see what good news looks like. This survey proves that Windows is chipping away at Unix and affecting it’s growth dramatically.
For the math stupid, it’s kind of like this; imagine having 10 servers at the moment, 9 of them are Unix. Imagine 5 years later, having 100 computers and having 90 of them running Unix. Everything looks good, but then 5 years later, imagine having 10,000 computers, and only 100 are Unix. This is exactly what’s happening in the computer industry. The fact that the Unix market is growing almost at the cost of inflation and maintenance, proves that the vast majority of costs are due to maintenance updates and cases where Windows and Linux can’t do the job yet. The fact that Windows and Linux are growing so quickly means that they are able to do the vast majority of things that people only trusted Unix before.
Well, stating that these are bad news for MS is really too much zealotry đ Honestly, I didn’t think MS could be able to overtake Unices (taling about revenues, of course) this year already. I think this is mostly dued to Windows2003 which had positive reviews since the beginning. I worked with Win2000 and 2003 and I have to say that while 2000 was good, 2003 is a very good platform to develop for in server arena.
Just a quick note: I stated many times (here too) that MS is far beyond common misconception. MS people are very good when doing their job and often their marketing dept. wastes good job developers are doing (just think about XP Entry or whatever that reduced asian version of XP is called… what a joke!).
I would just like to make you notice that MS recenlty entered two difficult markets like server one and mobile one. In both of them, common misconception (I’m not denying they exploited bad tactics on desktop market,of course) about MS illegal tactics and so forth cannot apply because both are markets which features a very wide competition from many different players. In both of them MS was able to win by delivering superior technology and innovation. I think many people should stop talking and start providing better technology and innovation. (For people who missed it, I read on this website an interesting article about MS becoming #1 seller for mobile / PDA systems. If you search for it, you will probably find it very easily…)
I also agree with Anonymous (IP: —.72-203-24.mc.videotron.ca): MS was REALLY scared about Free OSes in 1998-2000 and that was the right time for FOSS to prove itself a real competitor. Instead, 5 years later, we’re struck into still half-finished systems (let’s say 70-80%?). Again, I think many people should think about what Apple did: in a couple of years (maybe 3) they created a full system (almost) from scratch and were able to really set themselves as a competitor.
“The fact that Windows and Linux are growing so quickly means that they are able to do the vast majority of things that people only trusted Unix before.”
uhh, no. I used to work at a rather large shop in which the IT manager was a MS zealot. He started replacing the Netware and Solaris boxes with Windows. Unfortunately for him, the boxes that were replaced had to have high availability (how does a hospital administrator explain to the family of an expired patient that their relative died because the server running the blood bank BSOD and the staff could not get the right blood type to the patient in an acceptable time frame). Well, there were one too many BSODs and so he and the Windows box were replaced. The old Solaris box was put back and service. Under the “survey”, the decommissioned Windows server would still count as “revenue growth”, however it is not being used. I wonder how many of these cases exist.
This is hard to measure. There are many linux based appliances out there that are not in these figures. SPAM gateway appliances, firewalls, proxy servers, RAS…things that third party companies are selling as a solution rather than a server with an OS. There are also Windows based appliances, but the numbers are much lower.
The other problem is the cost of equally configured servers. What is the cost difference between a Sun box with hardware RAID, and a x86 box with hardware RAID (lets assume both HW RAID configs are the same technology). Sure, the uptime may be a better for the Solaris box, but for many medium sized buniness’ the cost difference is not worth the small difference in uptime (btw, the cost difference is significant).
This kind of crap is useless. What a business uses is based off their needs, and to say that this company moved to Windows because Windows is better, or they moved to Solaris because Solaris is better is crazy. They most likely switched to the other because it had a better offering for whatever they were looking at implementing. Of course, i know there are places out there that have managers that dont know what they are talking about and only want to use this or that, but times are changing, and the ol’ mighty dollar is over coming these biased thoughts (and getting a lot of people canned) and decisions.
These next three years should be pretty exciting. I am looking forward to it, whoever comes out on top.
BTW, I am a MS zealot…and a *nix zealot
Honestly,I believe that companies like Sun and IBM only supported open-source Unices because they hoped that customers would have then switched to their systems. If you move from Windows to Linux, then you have now basic infrastructure to move to a commercial Unix.
Of course, that didn’t work as expected because while Windows (as we’ve seen) and Linux figures kept growing, commercial Unices are falling. While IBM, after all, is mostly interested in selling their applications (Web Sphere, DB2), SUN renewed bet by open-sourcing Solaris, in secret hope that customers trying Solaris on x86 could then switch to SPARC.
Honestly, I can’t see how Linux could hurt “destroy” Windows in 10 or 20 years. Also consider that revenues we’re talking about are a sum. On a side we have one company (MS) while on the other side we have Unix with same revenues but many more vendors. This is important, expecially when considering that most Unices are not 100% compatible with each other…
Come on now, this is made up and you know it.
“uhh, no. I used to work at a rather large shop in which the IT manager was a MS zealot. He started replacing the Netware and Solaris boxes with Windows. Unfortunately for him, the boxes that were replaced had to have high availability (how does a hospital administrator explain to the family of an expired patient that their relative died because the server running the blood bank BSOD and the staff could not get the right blood type to the patient in an acceptable time frame). Well, there were one too many BSODs and so he and the Windows box were replaced. The old Solaris box was put back and service. Under the “survey”, the decommissioned Windows server would still count as “revenue growth”, however it is not being used. I wonder how many of these cases exist.” —————–
Come up with better lies than this garbage, so the Windows Server was Blue Screening, explain this to me. A child could think up better stories to lie about than this crap. I guess the other worked like a charm right?
Whatever, it is way past your bedtime and stop reading slashdot like a religion.
Dean
Whatever, it is way past your bedtime and stop reading slashdot like a religion.
lol! looks like we are becoming a large group of people who are sick of the sellout-slashdotters like this guy. it’s funny when some zealots keep insisting on the BSOD issue. the fact is, it doesn’t happen anymore except on rare cases (ie: hardware failures).
i realize everyday that they are so brainless. for over 5 years, 2 or 3 times a day, most of em keep saying stupid thing about microsoft. even the most retarded person on earth would do something else of his/her life after all these years.
now we can fully understand the slow evolution of linux. instead of actually working on it, most of the zealots waste their time attacking microsoft on slashdot. đ
I have used Linux and FreeBSD for years at home and used Solaris quite a bit at college. I wouldn’t call myself a zealot but more a fan of them with a solid understanding of their use and their positives and negatives. Up until 2000 Server there was not much of a difference in capabilites between what a MS offering could do and what you could easily do with a unix solution. That all changed with 2000 and Active Directory. It got even more pronounced with Server 2003.
MS offerings are now remarkably stable (with the caveat that you use quality hardware with well-supported peripherals and drivers – we use high-end HP servers at work), remarkably easy to manage with excellent directory servies and tools and provide some functionality not matched in their competition (except maybe Netware). Besides cost there is no longer a downside vs the competition and now there is even quite an upside. I wouldn’t have thought in the late 90s I would ever say that.
The MS server offerings, especially if you are using MS desktops, are very good. People in the open source community underestimate and belittle that to their own detrament. Learn all the capabilites and advantages MS is offering today (as opposed to 7 years ago) and learn from what makes them such good platforms. These assumptions that they are not stable and not a real threat are totally false. I work for a large bank and we have thousands of 2003 servers deployed and have had very few problems with any of them – if anything I have been quite impressed with my experience with it and would trust it vis a vie stability in the future.
These results are of no surprise to me and I am sure MS will continue to do very well with their Server 2003.
Who cares you use the right tool for the job. Heavy duty & mission critical uses are not for Windows their only lightweight servers. I manage 10 servers of which 4 are Windows & the rest are Sun Fire with Ultrasparc processors. Don’t have to tell you guys which ones I look after the most. IMHO Windows & Linux will dominate the server market in 10 years but there will still be a need for Unix. Who has tried to hot swap a CPU & memory board on a windows box while remaining online without needing a reboot. Nuff said.
Don’t they mean *nix. I would assume *BSD and Linux/GNU make up the big chunks now a-days.
Good luck with that. Trying to track the “revenue” of a freely available and growing OS would be a very interesting task.
Very good point. The same would go for *BSD and Linux I would guess. Also what about hardware purchased by companies for unknown purposes but ends up getting one OS or the other.
Two years ago my company was abandoning Sun faster then captain Edward John Smith could say âiceberg aheadâ. We started to replace them with HP and Dell Windowsâs servers. This year, weâre taking the Windowâs machine out back for a bullet to the head. We decided that reliable proprietary gold bars are a better investment then tarnish prone cheap copper. You get what you pay for; weâre now backing Unix but this time IBM (donât ask). Wait, this is just a fad…Unix and/or Linux will prevail at the end.
Nice to see 2k3 sales climbing since widely versitile OS. Yea BSD will probly be around for some time yet. Linux (sad to say) will probly always be around but I think ms will gain in the server market.
Just dont see Linux rolling out new technologies like ms has with 2k3 like asp.net for instance.
Its all good though, competition forces everyone to come out with better things giving everyone better options when picking a server os.
“Linux (sad to say) will probly always be around but I think ms will gain in the server market”
Linux will be always be around and has already started replacing Microsoft over in the EU and steadily taking over on the desktop. I used to be a Microsoft zealot as well until I was set free.
Debian will rule the world.
whats wrong with slashdot?
The report shows that Linux market share is growing, while proprietary Unix and Windows market share is declining. It is that simple – but then a lot of people are being paid money to put a pro MS spin on it.
Just look at the figures – it is clear that Linux is the only one of the three main server operating systems that is gaining market share.
“Come on now, this is made up and you know it.”
Troll.